Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/145

 their hereditary disposition to vice by appropriate restraints born of His intimate knowledge of the character and inclination of the human heart. But if, in spite of this, a man persists in the sinful courses of his ancestors, it is right that he should inherit their punishment as he has inherited their crimes.

The dialogue concludes with a myth of the type of Er the Armenian, in which, after the manner of Plato, Plutarch embodies views on the state of the soul after death, for which no place could be found in the rational argumentation of mere prose. Thespesius of Soli, an abandoned profligate, has an accident which plunges him into unconsciousness for three days. In this period his soul visits the interstellar spaces, where the souls of the dead are borne along in various motion; some wailing and terror-struck; others joyous and delighted; some like the full moon for brightness; others with faint blemishes or black spots like snakes. Here, in the highest place, was Adrastea, the daughter of Zeus and Ananke, from whom no criminal could hope ever to escape. Three kinds of justice are her instruments. Poena is swift to punish, chastising those whose sin can be expiated while they are still on earth. Those whose wickedness demands severer penalties are reserved for Justice in the afterworld. The third class of sinners, the irretrievably bad, are cast by Justice into the hands of Erinnys, "the third and most terrible of the servants of Adrastea," who pursues them as they wander hither and thither in reckless flight, and finally thrusts them all with pitiless severity into a place of