Note 39 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
that experience also enables us better to understand the blindness of Lucretius to the purifying and consoling power which even ancient religion was capable of exercising. Though not insensible to the poetical charm of some of the old mythological fancies, and to the solemnising effect of impressive ceremonials, he can see only the baser influences of fear in man's whole attitude to a supernatural Power. His ordinary acuteness of mind seems to desert him in that passage39 where he resolves the passions of ambition and avarice into the fear of death, and that again into the dread of eternal punishment.