roundings, and is more polished and metaphysical than it would have been if its author had been born in a hut; but it is nevertheless always practical, and while clearly recognizing that there are inevitable limitations of human power, it makes a grand claim for the possible capacity of human intelligence; it is not a system of in-door ethics that fails of efficiency when taken into the open air and exposed to the weather. Take, for example, what he says of religion: "To those who ask, 'Where have you seen the gods? how do you comprehend that they exist? why do you worship them?' I reply, in the first place, that they may be seen even with the eyes. In the second place, I have not seen my own soul, yet I honor it; and in respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, I comprehend that they exist, and I venerate them."
Of immortality he says: "It hardly seems possible that men who through pious acts have been most intimate with the Divinity, when they die should be completely extinguished. But if this is so, rest assured that it ought not to have been otherwise; for, you see, in this inquiry you are disputing with the Deity, who would not have allowed anything in the order of the universe to be neglected unjustly and irrationally. . . .
"Wait for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every human being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements; for it is according to Nature, and nothing is evil that is according to Nature." It may, of course, be claimed that he is an altogether exceptional man, and that his lofty views were unshared by his contemporaries. This, however, is not a sufficient explanation.
In a note to one of Moore's songs we are told that it was founded on this anecdote in Warren's "History of Ireland:" "The people were inspired with such a spirit of honor, virtue, and religion, by the great example of Brien, and by his excellent administration, that as a proof of it we are informed that a young lady of great beauty, adorned with jewels and a costly dress, undertook a journey alone from one end of the kingdom to the other, with a wand only in her hand, on the top of which was a ring of great value; and such an impression had the laws and government of this monarch made on the minds of all the people that no attempt was made upon her honor, nor was she robbed of her clothes and jewels." Whether this history is true or not, there is no gainsaying the fact that it existed in the popular Irish thought, or it would never have found expression. It requires a delicate and chaste imagination to conceive of such a legend, and the character of the people to-day seems to justify us in admitting its essential probability.
These writings of Antoninus may be accepted in a similar sense as
