Note 24 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

Diog. 156; Plut. N. P. Suav. Viv. 31. 2, p. 1107; Plac. iv. 7, 2; Ar. Didymus, in Eus. Præp. Ev. xv. 20, 3; Sen. Consol. ad Marc. c. 26, 7; Ep. 102, 22; 117, 6; Cic. Tusc. i. 31, 77. Seneca (ad Polyb. 9, 2; Ep. 65, 24; 71, 16; 36, 9, and in Tertull. De An. c. 42; Resurr. Carn. 3. 1) and M. Aurelius (iii. 3; vii. 32; viii. 25, 58) are only speaking κατ’ ἄνθρωπον, in seeming to doubt a future life after death, in order to dispel the fear of death in every case. It is, however, a mistake of Tiedemann (Sto. Phil. ii. 155) to suppose that they, in many passages (Sen. Ep. 71, 102, M. Aur. ii. 17; v. 4, 13), supposed the immediate dissolution of the soul after death. It is, on the contrary, clear, from M. Aurel. iv. 14, 21, that the soul lives some time after death, and is not resolved into the world-soul till the general conflagration. But even this is a variation from the ordinary view of the Stoics. According to Seneca (Consol. ad Marciam) the souls of the good, as in the doctrine of purgatory, undergo a purification, before they are admitted to the ranks of the blessed; and here this purification is no doubt required on physical grounds. When the soul is purified, both in substance and morals, it rises up to the ether, and there, according to M. Aurelius, united to the σπερματικὸς λόγος τῶν ὅλων, it lives, according to the common view, until the end of the world. The ether is also allotted to the blessed, for their residence, by Cic. Tusc. i. 18, 42; Lactant. Inst. vii. 20; Plut. N. P. Suav. Vivi. 31, 2, p. 1107. The souls, as Cicero remarks, penetrating the thick lower air, mount to heaven, until they reach an atmosphere (the juncti ex anima tenui et ardore solis temperato ignes) congenial with their own nature. Here they naturally stop, and are fed by the same elements as the stars. According to Chrysippus (in Eustath. on Il. xxiii. 65), they there assume the spherical shape of the stars. According to Tertull. De An. 54, conf. Lucan. Phars. ix. 5, their place is under the moon. Zeno, in speaking of the islands of the blest (Lact. Inst. vii. 7, 20), probably only desired to enlist popular opinion in his own favour. The souls of the foolish and bad also last some time after death; only, as being weaker, they do not last until the end of the world (Ar. Did.; Theodoret. Cur. Gr. Affec. v. 23, p. 73); and meantime, as it is distinctly asserted by Sen. Ep. 117, 6, Tertullian, and Lactantius, they are punished in the nether world. Tertullian in placing a portion of the souls of the foolish in the region of the earth, and there allowing them to be instructed by the wise, is probably referring to the purification mentioned by Seneca. For the supposed transmigration of souls see p. 166, 2. ↑