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24 in the doctrines of paganism, nor in the teachings of the philosophers. The theories upon which their lives had hitherto been based were found to be erroneous, and consequently the latter had become illogical and without meaning. A weariness and hopeless dejection had consequently crept into the hearts of men; they could find no relief in their own resources nor in anything around them. They lost even the last vestige of faith in a possible improvement and committed suicide by thousands, unable to resist the ravages of the moral epidemic. That dismal time when the Roman Empire was tottering to its fall, and paganism in its death throes, is the only period in which we meet with the same depression, the same restless spirit of investigation and fault-finding, the same skepticism in superficial and pessimism in deep minds which characterize our own highly civilized age. But after all, there is a difference between the two periods; this hopeless despair of the future only attacked the aristocracy of mind, comparatively a few in ancient Rome, while the masses lived out their existence in stolid unconcern, looking upon the great tragedy of the age merely as an exterior, material misfortune. But in our time this pessimism lowers like a dense, black cloud over the vast majority of cultivated human beings. The difference therefore is more in extent than in kind—but extent is the very point that distinguishes an epidemic from a disease.

Whence comes this mental distress common to all civilized peoples? To what cause can we trace the development of this unparalleled irritation and embittering,, which prevails with such alarming severity among all the tinkers of an age which seems to offer even to the