Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro.”[396]
But so long as human nature is composite: so long as it is compelled to feel an interest in the home joys of earth, and is endowed with an imagination which soars beyond the actual realities of life to the possibilities that lie beyond its limits: so long will the spirit which dominated Plutarch operate in inducing men “to borrow Reason from Philosophy, making it their Mystagogue to Religion:” so long will it be recognized that the most subtle Dialectic and the most spiritualized rapture are dangerous at once to Reason and Religion unless they are brought into contact with the necessities of daily life, and made to subserve the ends of practical goodness in the sphere of man’s natural and immediate interests. This recognition of Ethics as the dominating end of all Thought and Emotion will lead men on that firm path of reasonable happiness which, in Plutarch’s own favourite expression, lies midway between the headlong precipice of Atheism and the engulfing quagmire of Superstition.
FINIS.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See the Heading of the Lamprian Catalogue: Bernardakis. vol. vii. p. 473.
[2] Plutarchi Chæronensis Moralia recognovit Gregorius N. Bernardakis (Leipzig. Teubner. 7 vols. and Appendix).
[3] Classical Review, vol. iv. (1890), p. 306.
[4] (Then of Goettingen.) See the Præfatio to Bernardakis’ Second Volume.
[5] The Treatise of Plutarch, De Cupiditate Divitiarum, edited by W. R. Paton. (David Nutt. 1896.) We have also consulted Mr. Paton’s Plutarchi Pythici Dialogi tres (Berlin, 1893). (An emendation of Mr. Paton’s is noted infra, p. 90.)