But, permit me to say it, I must ask you to defer to me as being a philosopher.

Let us look at the matter in a rational way.
We have gotten over any bogies which our ancestors had about Hades, or the punishments of the wicked.

In fact, what we know--as good Epicureans--is that, as Democritus of Abdera[59] early taught, this world of ours is composed of a vast number of infinitely small and indivisible atoms, which have by some strange hap come to take the forms we see in the world of life and matter.

Now the soul of man is also of atoms, only they are finer and more subtile.

At death these atoms are dissolved, and so far as that man is concerned, all is over with him.