s is only proposing what, if you were a man of spirit, would
have been done long ago. You can't complain of Fortune, when she's put
a handsome estate in your hands for the asking."

"My admirable fellow," said Pratinas, benevolently, "I highly applaud
your scruples. But, permit me to say it, I must ask you to defer to me
as being a philosopher. Let us look at the matter in a rational way.
We have gotten over any bogies which our ancestors had about Hades, or
the punishments of the wicked. In fact, what we know--as good
Epicureans--is that, as Democritus of Abdera[59] early taught, this
world of ours is composed of a vast number of infinitely small and
indivisible atoms, which have by some strange hap come to take the
forms we see in the world of life and matter. Now the soul of man is
also of atoms, only they are finer and more subtile. At death these
atoms are dissolved, and so far as that man is concerned, all is over
with him. The atoms may recombine, or join with others, but never form
anew that same man. Hence we may fairly conclude that this life is
everything and death ends all. Do you follow, and see to what I am
leading?"

[59] Born about 470 B.C.

"I think so," said the wretched Lucius, feeling himself like a bird
caught in a snare, yet not exactly grasping the direct bearing of all
this learned exposition.

"My application is this," went on Pratinas, glibly. "Life is all--all
either for pleasure or pain. Therefore every man has a right to
extract all the sweetness he can out of it. But suppose a man
deliberately makes himself gloomy, extracts no joy from life; lets
himself be overborne by care and sorrow,--is not such a man better
dead than living? Is not a dreamless sleep preferable to misery or
even cold asceticism? And how much more does this all apply when we
see a man who makes himself unhappy, preventing by his very act of
existence the happiness of another more equably tempered mortal! Now I
believe this is the present case. Drusus, I understand, is leading a
spare, joyless, workaday sort of existence, which is, or by every
human law should be, to him a burden. So long as he lives, he prevents
you from enjoying the means of acquiring pleasure. Now I have Socrates
of imperishable memory on my side, when I assert that death under any
circumstances is either no loss or a very great gain. Considering then
the facts of the case in its philosophic and rational bearings, I may
say this: Not merely woul