In all this, and indeed in all the character of Agelastes, there is nothing more than shallow scholarship, such as may be found in many of 'the learned' in all ages, whose learning is worn as a fine garment, perhaps as one of comfort, but _not_ as the armor in which to earnestly do battle for life. A contempt for the vulgar, or at best a selfish rendering of life agreeable to themselves, is all that is gathered from such systems of doubt--and this was in all ages the reproach of all Greek philosophy. It was not meant for the multitude nor for the barbarian. It embraced no hope of benefiting all mankind, no scheme for even freeing them from superstition. Such ideas were only cherished by the Orientals, and (though mingled with errors) subsequently and _fully_ by the early Christians. It was in the East that the glorious doctrine of love for _all_ beings, not only for enemies, but for the very fiends themselves, was first proclaimed as essential to perfect the soul--as shown in the beautiful Hindu poem of 'The Buddha's Victory,'[17] in which the demon Wassywart, that horror of horrors, whose eyes are clots of blood, whose voice outroars the thunder, who plucks up the sun from its socket the sky, defies the great saint-god to battle: 'The unarmed Buddha mildly gazed at him, And said in peace: 'Poor fiend, _even thee I love_.' Before great Wassywart the world grew dim; His bulk enormous dwindled to a dove. * * * --Celestial beauty sat on Buddhas face, While sweetly sang the metamorphosed dove: 'Swords, rocks, lies, fiends, must yield to moveless love, And nothing can withstand the Buddha's grace.' And again, in 'The Secret of Piety'--the secret 'of all the lore which angelic bosoms swell'--we have the same pure faith: 'Whoso would careless tread one worm that crawls the sod, That cruel man is darkly alienate from God; But he that lives embracing all that is in _love_, To dwell with him God bursts all bounds, below, above.' The Greek philosophy knew nothing of all this, and the result is that even in the atheism which sprang from the East, and in its harshest and lowest 'tinctures,' we find a something nobler and less selfish than is to be found in the school of Plato himself. And however this may be, the reader will admit, in examining the six skeptics set forth by Scott, that each is a character firmly based in historical truth; that all, with the exception of 'Bletson,' are sketched with remarkable brevity; and that a careful comparative analysis of the whole gives us a deeper insight into the secret tendencies of the author's mind, and at the same time into the springs of his genius, than the world has been wont to take. And the study of the subject is finally interesting, since we may learn from it that even in the works of one who is a standard poetic authority among those who would, if possible, subject all men to feudalism, we may learn lessons of that highest social truth--republicanism. FOOTNOTES: