urrent of human aspirations. Meantime, the later Jewish
belief in a hereafter--in its form a much cruder conception of a physical
revival from the grave--flamed up in a passionate ardor, as the sequence
of the life and teaching of Jesus. The Platonic and the Christian belief
sprang from a like source. Each was born from the death of a man so
great and so beloved as to give the impression of some imperishable
quality.

Socrates, with his noble character and aim, was put to death as a
criminal. Was that the end of it all? Impossible--monstrous--never, if
this world be indeed a cosmos. The one firm certainty which Socrates
seems to have held, "No evil can happen to a good man in life or
death,"--flashes in Plato's mind into a glorious hope of immortality,
embodied in his loftiest passage, the picture of the dying Socrates.

The soul when withdrawn from all outward objects and rapt in
contemplation is nearest to the divine,--this is the central thought of
the Phaedo. It is pursued with much subtle argumentation, of which the
essential residuum is this: the soul's action is purest and most intense
when farthest withdrawn from the visible and tangible world,--and hence
we guess that her true and eternal home is in that invisible realm of
which all this material universe is but the veil and symbol.

But more impressive than the argument, more moving to the human heart, is
the picture which is given of Socrates himself as the hour of death comes
on,--the exaltation of all his familiar traits, the playfulness so
exquisitely blent with seriousness, the searching thought, the frank
human desire to be convinced by his own argument,--the charm of his
friendly ways, the hand playing with Phaedo's hair, the taking of the cup
"in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of
color, looking at the man with all his eyes as his manner was,"--the last
word, of calm reminder of a trivial obligation,--the whole scene of
majestic and tender peace, like a sunset. It is a scene which reconciles
us to life, and makes us no longer impatient even of our uncertainties.
It speaks with a voice like that of Landor's verse:--

"Death stands above me, whispering low,
I know not what into my ear,
Of his strange language all I know
Is,--there is not a word of fear."

To the modern reader there is a singular contradiction between the
doctrine of Lucretius and his temper. The denial of any divine
supervisi