" (so the original passage concludes) "we alone
possess a voice, which is the image of reason". It is in another poet
of the same school that we find what are perhaps the noblest lines in
all Latin poetry. Persius concludes his Satire on the common hypocrisy
of those prayers and offerings to the gods which were but a service of
the lips and hands, in words of which an English rendering may give the
sense but not the beauty: "Nay, then, let us offer to the gods that which
the debauched sons of great Messala can never bring on their broad
chargers,--a soul wherein the laws of God and man are blended,--a heart
pure to its inmost depths,--a breast ingrained with a noble sense of
honour. Let me but bring these with me to the altar, and I care not
though my offering be a handful of corn". With these grand words, fit
precursors of a purer creed to come, we may take our leave of the Stoics,
remarking how thoroughly, even in their majestic egotism, they
represented the moral force of the nation among whom they flourished; a
nation, says a modern preacher, "whose legendary and historic heroes
could thrust their hand into the flame, and see it consumed without a
nerve shrinking; or come from captivity on parole, advise their
countrymen against a peace, and then go back to torture and certain
death; or devote themselves by solemn self-sacrifice like the Decii. The
world must bow before such men; for, unconsciously, here was a form of
the spirit of the Cross-self-surrender, unconquerable fidelity to duty,
sacrifice for others".[2]

[Footnote 1: Macaulay.]

[Footnote 2: F.W. Robertson, Sermons, i. 218.]

Portions of three treatises by Cicero upon Political Philosophy have come
down to us: 1. I De Republica'; a dialogue on Government, founded chiefly
on the 'Republic' of Plato: 2. 'De Legibus'; a discussion on Law in the
abstract, and on national systems of legislation 3. 'De Jure Civili';
of which last only a few fragments exist. His historical works have all
perished.

CHAPTER XII.

CICERO'S RELIGION.

It is difficult to separate Cicero's religion from his philosophy. In both
he was a sceptic, but in the better sense of the word. His search after
truth was in no sneering or incredulous spirit, but in that of a reverent
inquirer. We must remember, in justice to him, that an earnest-minded man
in his day could hardly take higher ground than that of the sceptic. The
old polytheism was dying out in everything but in name,