Plutarch here evades a stumbling-block which he does not remove. The dialogue, as it has come down to us, breaks off suddenly after one final objection: how can beings have reason which have no notion of God? Some scholars imagine that Plutarch hurried the dialogue to a close because this query completely baffled him; others (and they are the majority) attribute the abrupt finish to the loss of the concluding part. Would Plutarch have contented himself with citing the analogy of young children who, although not without the elements of reason, know very little of theology, or would not he rather have contended with Celsus, that animals _do_ possess religious knowledge? If he took the last course, it may well be that the disappearance of the end of the dialogue was not accidental. At Ravenna there is a terrible mosaic, alive with wrath and energy, which shows a Christ we know not (for He looks like a grand Inquisitor) thrusting into the flames heretical books. As I looked at it, I thought how many valuable classical works, vaguely suspected on the score of faith or morals, must have shared the fate of “unorthodox” polemics in the merry bonfires which this mosaic holds up for imitation! The argument “that it sounds unnatural to ascribe reason to creatures ignorant of God,” suggests familiarity with a passage in Epictetus (Plutarch’s contemporary), where he says that man alone was made to have the understanding which recognises God—a recognition which he elsewhere explains by the hypothesis that every man has in him a small portion of the divine. Having this intuitive sense, man is bound, without ceasing, to praise his Creator, and, since others are blind and neglect to do it, Epictetus will do it on behalf of all: “for what else can I do, a lame old man, than sing hymns to God? If I was a nightingale, I should do the part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I would do like a swan; but now I am a _rational creature_, and I ought to praise God: this is my work; I do it, nor will I desert this post so long as I am allowed to keep it, and I exhort you to join in this song.” The words are among the sweetest and most solemn that ever issued from human lips; yet those who care to pursue the subject farther may submit that there was some one before Epictetus, who called upon the beasts, the fishes and the fowls to join him in blessing the name of the Lord, and there was some one after him who commanded the birds of the air to sing the praises of their Maker and Preserver! It is strange that, despite the hard-and-fast line which the moulders of the Catholic Faith were at pains to trace between man and beast, if we would find the most emphatic assertion of their common privilege of praising God, we must leave the Pagan world and take up the Bible and the “Fioretti” of St. Francis! [Illustration: (_Photo: Sommer._) BACCHUS RIDING ON A PANTHER. Naples Museum. (_Mosaic found at Pompeii._)]