e will mostly be those of his appetites, and on the
negative side a want of charity and compassion. He may be guiltless of
lying and stealing, murder and violence; he may be honest and
law-abiding; but there is nothing to make him temperate, continent, or
gentle. His avowed code is "duty," and duty is defined by law and
tradition.

If this is the religious condition of the common-place man or woman--a
blend of superstition, formalism, and tolerance--it is by no means
that of the educated thinker. Such persons were for the most part
freethinkers. Many of them, finding no better guide to conduct,
conform to the "religion" of the state without any real belief in its
gods or attaching any importance to its ceremonies. They do not feel
called upon to propagate any other views, and they probably think the
current notions are at least as good for the ignorant as any others.
If they are poets, like Horace or Lucan, they will dress up the
mythology, mostly from Greek models, and write fluently about Jupiter
and Juno, Venus and Mercury, either attributing to them the recognised
characters and legends, or varying them so as to make them more
picturesque and interesting--perhaps even improving them--but all the
time believing no more in the stories they are telling, or in the
deities themselves, than Tennyson need have believed in King Arthur
and Guinevere. The gods are good poetic material and are sure to
afford popular, or at least inoffensive, reading. The poets doubtless
do something to humanise and beautify the popular conception of a
deity, but they seldom deliberately set out with any such purpose. If
the educated are not poets, but public men of affairs, they may
believe just as little, and yet regard the established cult of the
gods as an excellent discipline for the vulgar and the best known
means of upholding the national principle of "duty." If they are
philosophers they may not, and the Epicureans in reality do not,
believe in the gods at all--certainly not as they are generally
conceived--and will openly discuss in speech and in writing the
question of their existence or non-existence, and of their character
and nature if they do exist. They will endeavour to substitute for the
barren formalism of rites and ceremonies, or the inconsistent or
incomplete traditional morality of duty, another set of principles as
a sounder guide to life and conduct. Some are monotheists, some are
simply in doubt. Says Nero's own tutor,