Note X — THE NEW TIMON. (continued 2)

Not only were the lofty and cheering notions of the soul, that were cherished by the more illustrious philosophers of Greece, confined to a few, but even the grosser and dimmer belief in a future state, which the vulgar mythology implied, was not entertained by the multitude. Plato remarked that few, even in his day, had faith in the immortality of the soul; and indeed the Hades of the ancients was not for the Many. Amongst those condemned we find few criminals, except the old Titans, and such as imitated them in the one crime—blasphemy to the fabled gods: and the dwellers of Elysium are chiefly confined to the poets and the heroes, the oligarchy of earth.