‘Masham is in politics a Tory, in religion ultra-orthodox,’ Herbert.  ’He has nothing about him of the latitudinarian; and yet he is the most amiable man with whom I am acquainted.  Nature has given him a kind and charitable heart, which even his opinions have not succeeded in spoiling.’

‘Perhaps that is exactly what he is saying of us two at this moment,’ said Cadurcis.  ’After all, what is truth?  It changes as you change your clime or your country; it changes with the century.  The truth of a hundred years ago is not the truth of the present day, and yet it may have been as genuine.  Truth at Rome is not the truth of London, and both of them differ from the truth of Constantinople.  For my part, I believe everything.’

‘Well, that is practically prudent, if it be metaphysically possible,’ said Herbert.  ’Do you know that I have always been of opinion, that Pontius Pilate has been greatly misrepresented by Lord Bacon in the quotation of his celebrated question.  ‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer.  Let us be just to Pontius Pilate, who has sins enough surely to answer for.  There is no authority for the jesting humour given by Lord Bacon.  Pilate was evidently of a merciful and clement disposition; probably an Epicurean.  His question referred to a declaration immediately preceding it, that He who was before him came to bear witness to the truth.  Pilate inquired what truth?’

‘Well, I always have a prejudice against Pontius Pilate,’ said Lord Cadurcis; ’and I think it is from seeing him, when I was a child, on an old Dutch tile fireplace at Marringhurst, dressed like a burgomaster.  One cannot get over one’s early impressions; but when you picture him to me as an Epicurean, he assumes a new character.  I fancy him young, noble, elegant, and accomplished; crowned with a wreath and waving a goblet, and enjoying his government vastly.’

‘Before the introduction of Christianity,’ said Herbert, ’the philosophic schools answered to our present religious sects.  You said of a man that he was a Stoic or an Epicurean, as you say of a man now that he is a Calvinist or a Wesleyan.’

‘I should have liked to have known Epicurus,’ said Cadurcis.

‘I would sooner have known him and Plato than any of the ancients,’ said Herbert.  ’I look upon Plato as the wisest and the profoundest of men, and upon Epicurus as the most humane and gentle.’

’Now, how do you account for the great popularity of Aristotle in modern ages?’ said Cadurcis; ’and the comparative neglect of these, at least his equals?  Chance, I suppose, that settles everything.’

‘By no means,’ said Herbert.  ’If you mean by chance an absence of accountable cause, I do not believe such a quality as chance exists.  Every incident that happens, must be a link in a chain.  In the present case, the monks monopolised literature, such as it might be, and they exercised their intellect only in discussing words.  They, therefore, adopted Aristotle and the Peripatetics.  Plato interfered with their heavenly knowledge, and Epicurus, who maintained the rights of man to pleasure and happiness, would have afforded a dangerous and seducing contrast to their dark and miserable code of morals.’