Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/93

 "Not death they know, nor age, nor toil and pain, And hear not Acheron's deep and solemn strain."

Philosophy, too, rejects the Strifes, the Prayers, the Terrors, and the Fears, which Homeric poesy elevates to the divine rank. Its teachings, moreover, are often at variance with religious practices established or recognized by Law and Prescription, as when Xenophanes chid the Egyptians for lamenting Osiris as a mortal, while yet worshipping him as a god. Poets and legislators, in their turn, refuse to recognize the metaphysical conceptions—"Ideas, Numbers, Unities, Spirits"—which philosophers—Platonists, Pythagoreans, and Stoics—have put in the place of Deity. (No. 4).]*