souls even beyond the grave. Dull and persistent, it is the only
substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still
sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus
sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hardships by land and sea,
Prometheus and Tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture,
Sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the Danaids fill the
ever-emptying jars.


_ii_. THE PLEASURES OF THIS WORLD

The picture is dark with shadow, and must be relieved with light and
color. The hasty conclusion should not be drawn that this is the
philosophy of gloom. The tone of Horace is neither that of the cheerless
skeptic nor that of the despairing pessimist. He does not rise from his
contemplation with the words or the feeling of Lucretius:

O miserable minds of men, O blind hearts! In what obscurity and in what
dangers is passed this uncertain little existence of yours!

He would have agreed with the philosophy of pessimism that life contains
striving and pain, but he would not have shared in the gloom of a
Schopenhauer, who in all will sees action, in all action want, in all
want pain, who looks upon pain as the essential condition of will, and
sees no end of suffering except in the surrender of the will to live.
The vanity of human wishes is no secret to Horace, but life is not to
him "a soap-bubble which we blow out as long and as large as possible,
though each of us knows perfectly well it must sooner or later burst."

No, life may have its inevitable pains and its inevitable end, but it is