Page:The White Stone.djvu/71

Rh Thereupon Lollius, bringing the conversation back to its starting-point, remarked:

"We have been seeking to penetrate the veil of the future. What are man's destinies, according to you, my friends, after his demise?"

In reply to this question, Annaeus Mela promised immortality to heroes and wise men, while denying it to the common of mankind.

"It passes belief," he said, "that misers, gluttons, and mean-spirited men should possess an immortal soul. Could so singular a privilege be the portion of coarse and silly oafs? I cannot entertain such a thought. It would be an insult to the majority of the gods to believe that they have decreed the immortality of the boor who wots only of his goats and cheeses, or of the freedman, richer than Croesus, who had no other cares in the world than to check the accounts of his stewards. Why, good gods, should they be provided with a soul? What sort of a figure would they present among heroes and wise men in the Elysian fields? These wretches, like so many others here below, are incapable of realising humanity's short-spanned life. How could they realise a life of longer duration? Vulgar souls are snuffed out at the hour of death, or they may for a while whirl about our globe, to vanish in the dense strata of the atmosphere. Virtue only, by making man the equal of the gods, makes them