Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/258

 and recognize the "immortal vitality of Philosophy and the eternal necessity of Religion," and would leave the individual mind to select its appropriate support from the dogmas of the one or the discoveries of the other, without dressing Philosophy in the fantastic garb of Religion, as the Neo-Platonists did, or turning Religion into a matter of rules and regulations as the Clerical Rationalists of the Eighteenth Century did, will be regarded by the extremists as traitors at once to the cause of progress and the cause of morality, and will be placed among the—

"Anime triste di coloro Che visser senza infamia, e senza lodo. Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro Degli Angeli, che non furon ribelli Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro."[2]

But so long as human nature is composite: so long as it is compelled to feel an interest in the home joys of earth, and is endowed with an imagination which soars beyond the actual realities of life to the possibilities that lie beyond its limits: so long will the spirit which dominated Plutarch operate in inducing men "to borrow Reason from Philosophy, making it their Mystagogue to Religion:" so long will it be recognized that the most subtle Dialectic and the most spiritualized rapture are dangerous at once to Reason and Religion unless they are brought into contact with the necessities of daily life, and made to subserve the ends of practical goodness in the sphere of man's natural and immediate interests. This recognition of Ethics as the dominating