_Epicurus._ By indifference to all who are indifferent to us; by taking joyfully the benefit that comes spontaneously; by wishing no more intensely for what is a hair's-breadth beyond our reach than for a draught of water from the Ganges; and by fearing nothing in another life. _Ternissa._ This, O Epicurus! is the grand impossibility. _Epicurus._ Do you believe the gods to be as benevolent and good as you are? or do you not? _Ternissa._ Much kinder, much better in every way. _Epicurus._ Would you kill or hurt the sparrow that you keep in your little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath flown where you did not wish him to fly? _Ternissa._ No! it would be cruel; the string about the leg of so little and weak a creature is enough. _Epicurus._ You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I may say confidently; for whenever there is a sentiment in which strict justice and pure benevolence unite, it must be His. _Ternissa._ O Epicurus! when you speak thus-- _Leontion._ Well, Ternissa, what then? _Ternissa._ When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as these, I am grieved that he has not so great an authority with the Athenians as some others have. _Leontion._ You will grieve more, I suspect, my Ternissa, when he possesses that authority. _Ternissa._ What will he do? _Leontion._ Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that he will forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest from the sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead body. If you invited a company to a feast, you might as well place round the table live sheep and oxen and vases of fish and cages of quails, as you would invite a company of friendly hearers to the philosopher who is yet living. One would imagine that the iris of our intellectual eye were lessened by the glory of his presence, and that, like eastern kings, he could be looked at near only when his limbs are stiff, by waxlight, in close curtains. _Epicurus._ One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or other token of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure and of gratitude; one of whom we know nothing writes a book, the contents of which might (if we would let them) have done us more good and might have given us more pleasure, and we revile him for it. The book may do what the legacy cannot; it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well as ourselves: we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love is extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it. While we insist that we are looking for Truth, we commit a falsehood. It never was the first object with any one, and with few the second. Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest little Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both gentle and boisterous, administer to them hourly on these sunny downs: what can they do better?