But so long as human nature is composite: so long as it is compelled to feel an interest in the home joys of earth, and is endowed with an imagination which soars beyond the actual realities of life to the possibilities that lie beyond its limits: so long will the spirit which dominated Plutarch operate in inducing men “to borrow Reason from Philosophy, making it their Mystagogue to Religion:” so long will it be recognized that the most subtle Dialectic and the most spiritualized rapture are dangerous at once to Reason and Religion unless they are brought into contact with the necessities of daily life, and made to subserve the ends of practical goodness in the sphere of man’s natural and immediate interests. This recognition of Ethics as the dominating end of all Thought and Emotion will lead men on that firm path of reasonable happiness which, in Plutarch’s own favourite expression, lies midway between the headlong precipice of Atheism and the engulfing quagmire of Superstition. FINIS. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. FOOTNOTES [1] See the Heading of the Lamprian Catalogue: BERNARDAKIS. vol. vii. p. 473. [2] PLUTARCHI CHÆRONENSIS _Moralia_ recognovit GREGORIUS N. BERNARDAKIS (Leipzig. Teubner. 7 vols. and Appendix). [3] _Classical Review_, vol. iv. (1890), p. 306. [4] (Then of Goettingen.) See the _Præfatio_ to BERNARDAKIS’ Second Volume. [5] The Treatise of PLUTARCH, _De Cupiditate Divitiarum_, edited by W. R. PATON. (David Nutt. 1896.) We have also consulted Mr. Paton’s _Plutarchi Pythici Dialogi tres_ (Berlin, 1893). (An emendation of Mr. Paton’s is noted _infra_, p. 90.) [6] _Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea_, von R. VOLKMANN (Berlin, 1869). [7] _De la Morale de Plutarque_, par OCTAVE GRÉARD (Paris, 1866). [8] _Plutarch, his Life, his Parallel Lives, and his Morals._ Five Lectures by RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., &c. (London, 1873). [9] _The Greek World under Roman Sway, from Polybius to Plutarch_, by J. P. MAHAFFY, D.D., &c. (London, 1890). [10] MAHAFFY, p. 321. How Plutarch could possibly have “_taken pains to understand_” Christianity when, in Professor Mahaffy’s own words (p. 349), he “_seems never to have heard of it_,” we must leave it to Professor Mahaffy to explain. [11] _Ibid._ p. 321. [12] _Ibid._ p. 349. [13] VOLKMANN, vol. ii. cap. 1. [14] GRÉARD, Preface to Third Edition, p. iii.