Had not the Lives been written, I am inclined to believe that the Moralia alone would have given Plutarch as high a place as he now holds, not only in the esteem of scholars, but in the interest and delight of all readers of good books; and I am sure that there is no loving reader of the Lives who will not be thankful to have his attention drawn to the Moralia. They exhibit throughout the same moral traits which their author shows as a biographer. He treats, indeed, incidentally, of some subjects which a purer ethical taste in the public mind might have excluded. He recognizes the existence of immoralities, which, not discreditable in the best society of unevangelized Greece and Rome, have almost lost their place and name in Christendom. Some of his dialogues have among the interlocutors those with whom as good a man as he would in our time associate only in the hope of converting them. But his own opinion and feeling on all moral questions are uniformly and explicitly in behalf of all that is pure, and true, and right, and reverent. Many of these Moralia are on what are commonly, yet wrongly, called the minor morals, that is, on the evils that most of all infest and destroy the happiness of families and the peace of society, and on the opposite virtues,—on such subjects, for instance, as “Idle Talking,” “Curiosity,” “Self-Praise,” and the like. Others are on such grave topics as “The Benefits that a Man may derive from his Enemies,” and “The Best Means of Self-Knowledge.” There is in all these treatises a large amount of blended common sense and keen ethical insight; and so little does human nature change with its surroundings that the greater part of Plutarch’s cautions, counsels, and precepts are as closely applicable to our own time as if they had been written yesterday.