me,' said Lucilia, 'for some of my every day good-sense, which,
you know, I possess in such abundance, though I have not sat at the feet
of philosophers.'

'But seriously, Lucius,' began Marcus in altered mood, 'this is a most
extraordinary movement of yours. I should like to be able to interpret
it. If you must needs have what you call religion, of which I, for my
part, can see no earthly occasion, here were plenty of forms in which to
receive it, more ancient and more respectable than this of the
Christians.'

'I am almost unwilling to converse on this topic with you, Marcus,' I
rejoined, 'for there is nothing in your nature, or rather in your
educated nature, to which to appeal with the least hope of any
profitable result, either to me, or you. The gods have, as you say,
given you a good heart--I may add too, a most noble head; but, yourself
and education together, have made you so thoroughly a man of the world,
that the interests of any other part of your nature, save those of the
intellect and the senses, are to you precisely as if they did not
exist.'

'Right, Lucius; therein do I claim honor and distinction. The
intangible, the invisible, the vague, the shadowy, I leave to women and
priests--concerning myself only with the substantial realities of life.
Great Jupiter! what would become of mankind were we all women, and
priests? How could the courts go on--senates sit, and deliberate--armies
conquer? I think the world would stand still. However, I object not to a
popular faith, such as that which now obtains throughout, the Roman
world. If mankind, as history seems to prove, must and will have
something of the kind, this perhaps is as good as anything else; and,
seeing it has once become established and fixed in the way it has, I
think it ought no more to be disturbed than men's faith in their
political institutions. Our concern should be, merely to regulate it,
that it grow not too large, and so overlay and crush the state. Fanatics
and bigots must be hewn away. There must be an occasional infusion of
doubt and indifference into the mass, to keep it from fermenting. You
cannot be offended, Lucius, at the way in which I speak of your
new-adopted faith. I think no better of any other. Epicureans, Stoics,
Platonists, Jews, Christians, they are all alike to me. I hold them all
at arms length. I have listened to them all; and more idle, indigested
fancies never did I hear--no, not from the new-fledged advocate pla