nelius had
ridden along in his place, and, on the dismissal of the company, passed
below the steps where Marius stood, with that new song he had heard
once before floating from his lips.

NOTES

10. +Transliteration: Ho kosmos hosanei polis estin. Translation: "The
world is like a city."

10. +Transliteration: to prepon ... ta ethe. Translation: "That which
is seemly ... mores."

CHAPTER XVI: SECOND THOUGHTS

[14] AND Marius, for his part, was grave enough. The discourse of
Cornelius Fronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual,
horizon, had set him on a review--on a review of the isolating
narrowness, in particular, of his own theoretic scheme. Long after the
very latest roses were faded, when "the town" had departed to country
villas, or the baths, or the war, he remained behind in Rome; anxious
to try the lastingness of his own Epicurean rose-garden; setting to
work over again, and deliberately passing from point to point of his
old argument with himself, down to its practical conclusions. That age
and our own have much in common--many difficulties and hopes. Let the
reader pardon me if here and there I seem to be passing from Marius to
his modern representatives--from Rome, to Paris or London.

What really were its claims as a theory of practice, of the sympathies
that determine [15] practice? It had been a theory, avowedly, of loss
and gain (so to call it) of an economy. If, therefore, it missed
something in the commerce of life, which some other theory of practice
was able to include, if it made a needless sacrifice, then it must be,
in a manner, inconsistent with itself, and lack theoretic completeness.
Did it make such a sacrifice? What did it lose, or cause one to lose?

And we may note, as Marius could hardly have done, that Cyrenaicism is
ever the characteristic philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its
survey--sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is
one of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because
limited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in this
case, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man's life there)
which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to
express. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greek
world, we see this philosophy where it is least blase, as we say; in
its most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form,
youthfully bright in the yo