616 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unknown to the multitude except in its effects, why has he not the 

 right to use it? — to use it first of all to enhance his authority and to 

 draw from such authority the advantages that seem to him most de- 

 sirable ? We may well admit that a man of this stamp may have had 

 an inward feeling akin to what we call conscience that would justify 

 his attitude toward Ms fellows — yet he did not consider these Romans 

 fellow men of his — but it was wholly of the intellect. Such a man is 

 as much a philosopher as were the sophists of an earlier age, and, we 

 may add, of our own day. They apprehend clearly certain superficial 

 verities, but cease to inquire farther after they have discovered what 

 they think needful and sufficient for their own aggrandizement. Far 

 different was the class of witches, one of whom is introduced in the 

 same novel. Against these Horace frequently raises his voice, as do 

 also others of the rationalizing Romans. They are ignorant, and, in 

 most instances, as much the dupes of their own juggleries as their 

 victims. Every man who goes through the world with his mind alert 

 can see specimens without especially looking for them. It is doubt- 

 ful whether any man has ever lived who had not at least a modicum 

 of superstition in him. However much we ma}' know and however 

 far we may be able to pry into nature in some directions, there are 

 others in which our vision is barred and the unknown is literally within 

 arm's length. The mystery of life and death has always been so pro- 

 found, as it still is though in a different way, that we need not wonder 

 at the strange aberrations which so many persons fell into, who were 

 in most matters little likely to be carried away by delusions. Sleep, 

 ' the twin brother of death,' has from time out of mind been regarded 

 as an excursion into the realm of departed spirits. If, as many be- 

 lieve, our consciousness is never coextensive with our personality, there 

 are yet many discoveries to be made not dreamt of in the philosophy 

 of most of us. Our will as an integral part of ourselves is the resultant 

 of so many forces and, with the majority, is so little under control of 

 rational motives, that it often plays fantastic tricks, not before high 

 heaven alone, but almost anywhere. 



The will of each individual as modified, at least in action from 

 moment to moment, is like a ball thrown into a grove. It strikes one 

 tree, then another and another, and no one can predict with certainty 

 where it will come to rest. This element of chance, of Tyche, in the 

 affairs of men, this incalculable calculus of probabilities, pervades in 

 a remarkable degree the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. It 

 made many feel that, do what they would, they were doomed to be 

 thwarted in their plans. It was only those who, like Socrates, Epictetus 

 and a few others, maintained that the chief end of man is to be found 

 in motives rather than in outward results, who were never thrown out 

 of their philosophical poise by the strange vicissitudes of life. 



