252 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



" you ought to shudder at. There is corn, there again are fruits hanging on 



" heavy-laden boughs, grapes and tasteful vegetables Milk is 



" not denied you, or honey, scented by flowering thyme. The earth is lavish 

 " of her riches and provides you banquets without slaughter or bloodshed. 

 " "Wild beasts resort to flesh to satisfy their hunger, yet not all of these . . . 

 "Amid so much abundance which the earth, that best of mothers offers, will 

 " nothing please you but to munch the gashed joints with ferocious 



" teeth Can you not otherwise allay the cravings of a voracious 



"and undisciplined maw than by destroying another life? The times of old 

 " we call the Golden Age were happy in the yield of fruit and of the crops 



" the soil brings forth No snares were laid, no fraud was to 



" be feared, but when some futile innovator envied us and gorged his hungry 



" paunch with animal food, the way to cruelty was opened wide 



" the evil spread. As the first sacrifice the boar was doomed because with 



" his snout he roots up seeds Next the goat .... in revenge 



"for his destroying vines. Each suffered for its particular fault, but what 

 " did the sheep deserve, that inoffensive race .... whose milk supplies 

 " us nourishment, whose fleece gives us soft, warm clothing, and who avail 

 "us more living than dead? What again did the ox merit, a creature without 

 "fraud or guile, innocent, simple, born to be patient under toil? The man is, 

 " indeed, ungrateful and unworthy to reap a harvest who can bring himself 

 " to butcher this tiller of the soil so soon as relieved from dragging the heavy, 



" curved plough And since a Divine spirit makes me speak, I 



" will open as it were the skies It delights me to wander among 



" the stars of the high Heavens, to be wafted to the clouds, and, leaving 

 " the surface of the earth and its dulness, to mount the heights and look 



" down upon the incertitudes and stupidities of men Ye who are 



alarmed by the fear of chilly death, why do ye dread the Styx, the gloom, 

 "the empty names and dreams of poets? Do not think you can suffer the 

 " least harm by your remains being burned on the funeral pile, or by their 

 " mouldering away. Our souls do not die, but, leaving their former tenement, 

 " are received into new homes, and still live on. I, myself, was Euphorbus, 

 "the son of Panthous, who was slain by a spear-thrust in the chest by 

 " the younger son of Atreus. I lately saw and remembered the shield I used 



" to wear, it is in Juno's temple at Argos Nothing becomes ex- 



" tinct, everything changes, the soul wanders, and from one abode drifts 

 " hither and thither and occupies some other. The souls of wild animals 

 "may occupy human bodies and our spirits theirs, without at any time 

 " ceasing to be. As pliant wax impressed with new figures does not pre- 

 " serve its old shape, but is none the less the same wax, so the soul is 



"ever the same, but changes into different forms Nothing in the 



"universe is stable, all things are flowing on and every form is fleeting. 

 " Time itself runs in an unceasing stream, like a river, for neither can the 

 "river nor the passing hour be still .... for what was before is left 

 "behind, that which as yet was not, lo! it is . . . . Mark how the year 

 " moves by, in four seasons like our lives. Tender and fed with milky 

 "juices, as the age of childhood, is the new-born spring .... all Nature 

 "blossoms, the lovely fields delight in the colour of their flowers, but as 

 "yet there is no substance in the leafage. After spring, the year, acquiring 

 " force, passes into summer, like a vigorous youth. There is no more robust 

 " time than this, none more prolific, none more replete with action. Autumn 



