which it is stated, remain immortal possessions.

Why such a man as Plotinus, with such ideas, remained a pagan, while
Christianity offered him a sympathetic refuge, who can tell? Probably
natural conservatism, in him as in Dr. Johnson--conservatism and
taste--caused his adherence to the forms at least of the older creeds.
There was much to laugh at in Plotinus, and much to like. But if you
read him in hopes of material for strange stories, you will be
disappointed. Perhaps Lord Lytton and others who have invoked his name
in fiction (like Vivian Grey in Lord Beaconsfield's tale) knew his name
better than his doctrine. His "Enneads," even as edited by his patient
Boswell, Porphyry, are not very light subjects of study.




LUCRETIUS


_To the Rev. Geoffrey Martin, Oxford_.

Dear Martin,--"How individuals found religious consolation from the
creeds of ancient Greece and Rome" is, as you quote C. O. Muller, "a very
curious question." It is odd that while we have countless books on the
philosophy and the mythology and the ritual of the classic peoples, we
hear about their religion in the modern sense scarcely anything from
anybody. We know very well what gods they worshipped, and what
sacrifices they offered to the Olympians, and what stories they told
about their deities, and about the beginnings of things. We know, too,
in a general way, that the gods were interested in morality. They would