Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/350

 342 MARCUS BRUTUS. me at Philippi." To which Brutus, not at all disturbed, replied, " Then I shall see you." As soon as the apparition vanished, he called his ser- vants to him, who all told him that they had neither heard any voice nor seen any vision. So then he continued watching till the morning, when he went to Cassias, and told him of what he had seen. He, who followed the principles of Epicurus's philosophy, and often used to dispute with Brutus concerning matters of this nature, spoke "to him thus upon this occasion : " It is the opinion of our sect, Brutus, that not all that we feel or see is real and true ; but that the sense is a most slippery and deceitful thing, and the mind yet more quick and subtle to put the sense in motion and aifect it with every kind of change upon no real occasion of fact; just as an impression is made upon wax; and the soul of man, which has in itself both what imj)rints and what is imprinted on, may most easily, by its own ojjerations, produce and assume every variety of shajae and figure. This is evident from the sudden changes of our dreams ; in which the imaginative principle,* once started by any trifling matter, goes through a whole series of most diverse emotions and appearances. It is its nature to be ever in motion, and its motion is fantasy or conception. But besides all this, in your case, the body, being tired and distressed with continual toil, naturally works upon the mind, and keeps it in an excited and unusual condition. But that there should be any such thing as supernatural beings,f or, if there were, that they ginative principle is the pltantasti- in motion, and its motion consists con (phantasia and memory are, in seeing, hearing, and perceiving says Aristotle, what brutes have ) ; things of its own making, it is imagination in its lowest sense t Supernatural beings is, in the of the faculty of reproducing im- Greek, daimones, daimons, or, ety-
 * The Greek term for the ima- ages. It is always, says Cassius,