298. In the period of the Roman principate the question of the future existence of the soul acquires special prominence. Seneca is criticized on the ground that he affects at times a belief which he does not sincerely entertain, partly in order to make his teaching more popular, partly to console his friends in times of mourning. The facts stand otherwise. At no time does Seneca exceed the limits of the accepted Stoic creed; he bids his friends look forward to the period of purgation[157], the life of pure souls in the regions of the aether, and the final union with the divine being. It is after purgation that the soul by the refinement of the elements of which it is built forces its way to higher regions[158]; it finds a quiet and peaceful home in the clear bright aether[159]; it has cast off the burden of the flesh[160]; it is parted by no mountains or seas from other happy souls[161]; it daily enjoys free converse with the great ones of the past[162]; it gazes on the human world below, and on the sublime company of the stars in its own neighbourhood[163]. At a later epoch all blessed souls will be re-absorbed in the primal elements[164], suffering change but not forfeiting their immortal nature[165]. The somewhat exuberant language of Seneca has frequently been adopted by Christian writers, to express a belief which is not necessarily identical[166]; but for the associations thus created Seneca must not be held responsible.
Personality cannot survive.
299. With the decay of interest in the Stoic physics there begins a tendency to overlook the intermediate stage of the soul’s life, and to dwell solely on its final absorption; whilst at the same time it is urged from the ethical standpoint that no possible opinion as to the soul’s future should disturb the calm of the virtuous mind. On one further, but important, point the Stoic teaching becomes clearer. In no case is the soul that survives death to be identified with the man that once lived. Cut off from all human relations, from the body and its organs, and from its own subordinate powers[167], it is no longer ‘you,’ but is something else that takes your place in the due order of the universe. In all this the Stoic doctrine remains formally unchanged; but its expression is now so chastened that it seems only to give a negative reply to the inherited hope, and the chief comfort it offers is that ‘death is the end of all troubles.’ This change of tone begins in Seneca himself; it is he who says to the mourner ‘your loved one has entered upon a great and never-ending rest[168]’; ‘death is release from all pain and its end[169]’; ‘death is not to be. I know all its meaning. As things were before I was born, so they will be after I am gone[170].’ ‘If we perish in death, nothing remains[171].’ In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius this new tone rings out much more clearly; if we like so to speak, more unrelentingly. To the characteristic passages from these writers which are quoted above[172] may be added the following, perhaps the most precise of all:
‘If souls survive death, how can the air hold them from all eternity? How, we reply, does earth hold the bodies of generation after generation committed to the grave? Just as on earth, after a certain term of survival, change and dissolution of substance makes room for other dead bodies, so too the souls transmuted into air, after a period of survival, change by processes of diffusion and of ignition, and are resumed into the seminal principle of the universe, and in this way make room for others to take up their habitation in their stead. Such is the natural answer, assuming the survival of souls[173].’
Such are the last words of Stoicism, not wholly satisfying either to knowledge or to aspiration, but assuredly based on a wide outlook and a keen discrimination.
Men and women.
300. The whole nature of man, as discussed up to this point, is common to every individual born into the world, with some exceptions dependent on age or temperament which have been explained incidentally. It remains to discuss shortly the important differences which result from sex, nationality, and location. There seems every reason to believe that the equality of men and women, though at the time seemingly paradoxical, was generally accepted by the earlier Stoics, and adopted as a practical principle in Stoic homes. The whole treatment of human nature by the Stoics applies equally to man and woman, and points to the conclusion that as moral agents they have the same capacities and the same responsibilities[174]. Seneca in writing to a great lady of philosophical sympathies states this as his firm conviction[175], and the lives of many Stoic wives and daughters (to whom we shall refer in a later chapter)[176] showed it to have a firm basis in fact. We need attach no great importance to those more distinctively masculine views which Seneca occasionally expresses, to the effect that woman is hot-tempered, thoughtless, and lacking in self-control[177], or to the Peripatetic doctrine that man is born to rule, women to obey[178]; for these sentiments, however welcome to his individual correspondents, were not rooted in Stoic theory nor exemplified in the Roman society of his own days.
Class and race.
301. It follows with equal certainty from the early history of Stoicism, and in particular from the doctrine of the Cosmopolis, that differences of class and race were hardly perceived by its founders. For this there was further historical cause in the spread of Hellenistic civilisation, which was of an entirely catholic spirit and welcomed disciples from all nationalities[179]. The doctrine of Aristotle, that some nations are by nature fitted only for slavery, finds no echo in the Stoic world[180]. There we look in vain for any trace of that instinctive feeling of national difference, that sensitiveness to race and colour, which can easily be recognised in the early history of Greece and Rome, and which has become so acute in the development of modern world-politics. The Roman Stoics, as we shall see later, might individually be proud of advantages of birth, but they never associated this feeling with their philosophy. Here and there, however, we find signs of a scientific interest in the question of differences of national character, which are generally ascribed to the influences of climate. Seneca, for instance, remarks that the inhabitants of northern climates have characters as rude as their sky; hence they make good fighters, but poor rulers[181]. Yet when he contemplates the northern barbarians, his mind is mainly occupied by admiration; and, like other pro-Germans of the period, he foresees with prophetic clearness a danger threatening the Roman empire. ‘Should the Germans once lay aside their fierce domestic quarrels, and add to their courage reason and discipline, Rome will indeed have cause to resume the virtues of its early history[182].’ The roots of true greatness of soul, then, lie deeper than in literary culture or philosophic insight. It is a part of the irony of history that Stoicism, which aimed above all things at being practical, should diagnose so correctly the growing weakness of the Roman world, and yet fail to suggest any remedy other than a reversion to an epoch in which philosophy was unknown.