‘Perhaps not,’ said Seneca. ‘But the popular religion is one thing, and philosophy is another.’
‘Would you, then, be content to see the mass of the pagan population unjustly tortured, unjustly slain, because their religion is a noxious superstition?’
‘They do not render themselves amenable to the laws.’
‘Nor do these poor Christians. I know their tenets. Their moral teaching again and again reminds me of your own, which it sometimes resembles almost to verbal identity.’
‘I have heard,’ said Seneca, ‘that their Paulus of Tarsus has genius and style; but it is to me incredible. What can he know of philosophy?’
‘Pardon me, dear friend,’ replied Pomponia, ‘he knows a philosophy far diviner than that of the Porch, far nobler than that of the Garden or the Lyceum. It is a philosophy which may not puff up the pride of intellect, but can sway the motives of the life. You may perhaps find in Rome—though I doubt it—ten philosophers who live purely and simply, but I could find you many hundreds of Christians.’
‘Men of the common herd,’ he said, in a tone of some disdain.
‘Are they not our fellow-men? Did not one God make them and us? Did He mean only a handful to be blessed, and the rest to perish? Have you no pity for them? Have not you yourself said, “Man is a sacred thing to man”?’
‘Why should I waste my life in an unavailing pity? Pity is a weakness which the true philosopher should suppress.’
‘Ah!’ replied Pomponia, ‘I see the secret why Stoicism fails. It talks of following nature, and it flings away its sweetest elements.’