t's true that the modern Roman, before the extension of
the S.P.C.A. to his city, used his horse cruelly upon the perfectly
unquestionable ground that the poor beast was not a Christian."

"I don't remember about the Stoics exactly," the second friend mused
aloud; and the first let this go, though they both understood that very
likely he not only did not remember, but had never known. "They had so
many virtues that they must have been kind to brutes, but I taste
something more Cowperian, more Wordsworthian, than Marcus-Aurelian in
our own kindness. These poets taught me, so far as I could learn, not
to

'enter on my list of friends the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm,'

and

'Never to mix my pleasure or my pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that breathes.'"

"Yes, but I don't like giving up the Stoics; we may have to come back to
their ground if things keep on going the way they have gone for the last
generation. The Stoics had a high ideal of duty; it's hard to see that
the Christian ideal is higher, though they taught themselves to be
proudly good, and we (if we may still say we when we say Christians) are
always trying to teach ourselves to be humbly good."

"What do you mean," the second of the friends demanded, "by coming back
to their ground?"

"Why," the first responded, picking up a twig that opportunely dropped
at his feet, and getting out his knife to whittle it, "I suppose they
were the first agnostics, and we who don't so much deny the Deity as
ignore Him----"

"I see," the second answered, sadly. "But aren't you throwing up the
sponge for faith rather prematurely? The power of believing has a
tremendous vitality. I heard a Catholic once say to a Protestant friend,
'You know the Church has outlived schisms much older than yours.' And
inside of Protestantism as well as Catholicism there is a tremendous
power of revival. We have seen it often. After an age of unbelief an age
of belief is rather certain to follow."

"Well, well, I'm willing. I'm no more agnostic than you are. I should
be glad of an age of faith for the rest to my soul, if for no other
reason. I was harking back to the Stoics not only because they were good
to animals, if they were good, but because they seemed to have the same
barren devotion to duty which has survived my faith as well as my creed.
But why, if I neither expect happiness nor dread misery, should I still
care to do my duty? An