"He was a clever man, with admirable opportunities," answered Serenus. "I am an Epicurean, and Seneca's teaching is not mine. Yet, in some of its details his teaching is also Epicurean. With him, philosophy was less an affair of the mind than of the imagination, and of good taste; it is always the artist, the orator, who is teaching, and his eloquence is never quite persuasive, because the artist is never quite persuaded. He belongs to no school, he is an eclectic; and he seeks rather to inculcate the practice of virtue than to show what virtue is. He neither asks nor answers a question. The vices and weaknesses which he condemned in others he had found in himself; his was a subjective, a poetic, a romantic mind. And it was precisely for this reason that his disciples loved him, because of that emotional and many coloured nature, which saw virtue, the most austere virtue, ever as a god, and found it unattainable." "Yes, that is true," said Rufus. "But did Seneca believe in the gods, and in the immortality of the soul?" enquired Marcus. Serenus smiled. "Yes," he answered; "Seneca spent his whole life in seeking for the truth, but the truth for which he sought was one which should be agreeable to his own nature. A divinity was necessary to his well-being. He speaks of a loving God, of a God who orders the world aright and whose will we should obey without a murmur; and in consequence his hatred for the Epicureans was great. He could not forgive us for showing the gods serene and untroubled in their abode, into which penetrates no whisper of mortal anguish; and for saying that no voice of prayer troubles their endless pleasure, and that without tears or anger they gaze at once upon our sorrow and our sin, and are heedless of the hands uplifted in supplication from every corner of the earth. Yes; God is necessary to a Stoic. But we Epicureans have called upon the gods and they have not answered us; we have sought them throughout the world and have not found them; neither are they in the seas nor in the skies; we have not seen them destroy the wicked nor protect the innocent; we think that they are not interested in our humble affairs; they are neither our masters nor our creators, but belong to the same order of things as we do, though of a finer and less perishable nature: if, indeed, they exist at all." "Stoicism is a hatred of humanity," said Marcus; "perhaps Epicureanism is a love of it. Rufus, do you not think the Epicureans are clever? They do not deny the existence of gods; but they make their gods of such a divinely intangible substance that doubt becomes in itself almost an act of worship. It is as if they feared to profane the sanctuary with human feet soiled by the dust of travail."