"Of course I see that," answered Socrates; "but if you accept the idea of a universal mind animating all things, why should the misery and wretched conditions of the life of men dissipate this idea? Your play shows that it is man's own folly, and not the anger of the gods, that punishes him with misfortune. Theseus in ignorance calls down the doom of death upon Hippolytus, and thus brings evil upon himself. It is the lust of Phædra, and the blind anger of Theseus, which are responsible for the death of the innocent; but is it better to have suffered unjustly as Hippolytus suffered, or to die in shame, despised, as Phædra died, or to live as Theseus lived in misery, though forgiven?" "I agree to what you have said of my play," answered Euripides, his worn, melancholy face illuminated with a smile; "and I agree, also, that it was my purpose to deny that the gods do evil, and to make people dissatisfied with the myths. I misunderstood the reason for your use of what the chorus says about the Supreme Mind; the doings of men seem to me to be more the result of the conditions of life than of their own wickedness. If men err it is through ignorance; but they suffer quite independently of their deserts. It is through my sympathy with mankind that I am led into doubt. Man struggles all his life with the fluctuations and vicissitudes of fortune; his pleasures are but phantoms and visions which elude his grasp; the one certainty before him is death: an unknown terror. Why has he been set among this play of circumstance, over which he has no control, but which whirls him away like a dead leaf upon the ripples and eddies of a river? The best happiness we can find in life is resignation, a folding of the hands, a withdrawal into the interior peace of our own minds, the serene heights which the Muses inhabit. Those who have gained that sanctuary have at least the happiness which comes from a knowledge of the limitations of life; they have learned to desire little, to delight in natural and simple things, the bright air, the coolness of forests, wind rippling the waves of corn and setting the poplar leaves a-tremble; but, alas! behind even this serenity of mind is the shadow of human suffering. So few are the wise, and so many the miserable! We would not, if we could, cut ourselves off from the dumb herd of humanity, with its obscure sufferings, its vague desires, its inarticulate and eternal pain." "I should not ask it of you, Euripides," said Socrates gently. He had a real love for Euripides, a real admiration for the mind which through its own tumult and discord had come at last into the possession of peace, and to the vision of a clear hope.