being, whose pleasure it is to torment, or, there is an immortal state,
where we shall meet again with those, who, for inscrutable purposes, have
been torn from our arms here below? And who can hesitate in which to rest?
The belief, therefore, in a future life ought to be in proportion to the
difficulty of admitting the idea of divine malignity. And this idea is so
repulsive--so impossible to be entertained for one moment--that the other
cannot, it seems to me, rest upon a firmer foundation.'

'Every word you speak,' said Zenobia, 'yields pleasure and instruction. It
delights me, even when thickest beset by the cares of state, to pause and
contemplate for a moment the prospects of futurity. It diffuses a divine
calm throughout the soul. You have given me new food for my thoughts.'

'I will add,' said Longinus, 'only one thing to what I have said, and
that is, concerning the incompleteness of man, as a divine work, and
which has been mentioned by Fausta. Is not this an argument for a future
life? Other things and beings are finished and complete--man only is
left, as it were, half made up. A tree grows and bears fruit, and the end
of its creation is answered. A complete circle is run. It is the same
with the animals. No one expects more from a lion or a horse than is
found in both. But with man it is not so. In no period of history, and
among no people, has it been satisfactorily determined what man is, or
what are the limits of his capacity and being. He is full of
contradictions, and of incomprehensible organization, if he is considered
only in relation to this world. For while every other affection finds and
rests in its appropriate object, which fully satisfies and fills it, the
desire of unlimited improvement and of endless life--the strongest and
best defined of any of the desires--this alone is answered by no
corresponding object: which is not different from what it would be, if
the gods should create a race like ours, having the same craving and