The tendency to total disbelief of the supernatural prevailed in the Epicurean school. A type of the more earnest spirits of this class is seen at a period a little earlier than the Christian era in Lucretius, living mournfully in the moral desert which his doubts had scorched into barrenness.(127) The world is to him a scene unguided by a Providence: death is uncheered by the hope of a future life. An example of the flippant sceptic is found in Lucian in the second century, A.D. The great knowledge of life which travel had afforded him created a universal ridicule for religion; but his unbelief evinced no seriousness, no sadness. His humour itself is a type of the man. Lacking the bitter earnestness which gave sting to the wit of Aristophanes, and the courteous playfulness exhibited in the many-sided genius of Plato, he was a caricaturist rather than a painter: his dialogues are farces of life rather than satires. It has been well remarked, that human society has no worse foe than a universal scoffer. Lacking aspirations sufficiently lofty to appreciate religion, and wisdom to understand the great crises that give birth to it, such a man destroys not superstition only but the very faculty of belief.(128) It is easy to perceive that to such minds Christianity would be a mark for the same jests as other creeds. A second tendency, most widely opposed in appearance to the sceptical, but which was too often its natural product, showed itself in a bigoted attachment to the national religion.(129) Among the masses such faith was real though unintelligent, but in educated men it had become artificial. When an ethnic religion is young, faith is fresh and gives inspiration to its art and its poetry. In a more critical age, the historic spirit rationalizes the legends, while the philosophic allegorizes the myths; and thoughtful men attempt to rise to a spiritual worship of which rites are symbols.(130) But in the decay of a religion, the supernatural loses its hold of the class of educated minds, and is regarded as imposture, and the support which they lend to worship is political. They fall back on tradition to escape their doubts, or they think it politically expedient to enforce on the masses a creed which they contemn in heart. Such a ground of attachment to paganism is described in the dialogue of the Christian apologist, Minucius Felix.(131) It would not only coincide with the first-named tendency in denying the importance of Christianity, but would join in active opposition. In truth, it marks the commencement of the strong reaction which took place in favour of heathenism at the close of the second century,—twofold in its nature; a popular reaction of prejudice or of mysticism on the part of the lower classes, and a political or philosophical one of the educated.(132) Both were in a great degree produced by Eastern influences. The substitution which was gradually taking place of naturalism for humanism, the adoration of