transcendent ideal world, as modern thought has rebelled against the
supernaturalism of mediaeval religion and philosophy."[813] In their
passion for unity they would not separate soul and body. But when once
Panaetius had hinted at a reversion to the older mode of thought, it was
natural and easy to follow his lead in a society which had long ago
abandoned burial for cremation, and bidden farewell to the primitive
notion that the body lived on under the earth: in a society, too, which
had always believed in that "other soul," the _Genius_ of a man, as
distinct from his bodily self of this earthly life.[814]

Now as soon as this dualism of body and soul was suggested, it was taken
up by Posidonius into what we may call his neo-Stoic system, and at once
gave mysticism,--or transcendentalism, if we choose so to call it--its
chance. For in such a dualistic psychology it is the soul that gains in
value, the body that loses. Life becomes an imprisonment of the soul in
the body; the soul seeks to escape, death is but the beginning of a new
life, and the imagination is set to work to fathom the mysteries of
Man's future existence, nay, in some more fanciful minds, those of his
pre-existence as well. This kind of speculation, half philosophic, half
poetical, is the transcendental side of the Platonic psychology, and in
the last age of the Republic was able to connect Platonism and
Pythagoreanism without deserting Stoicism.[815] We can see it reflected
from Posidonius in the Dream of Scipio, the beautiful myth, imitated
from those of Plato, with which Cicero concluded his treatise on the
State, written in the year 54 B.C., after his retirement from political
life. In this, and again in the first book of his _Tusculan
Disputations_, composed nearly ten years later, Cicero is beyond doubt
on the tracks of Posidonius, and therefore also of Pythagoreanism.[816]
Listen to the words put into the mouth of the elder Scipio and addressed
to his younger namesake: "Tu vero enitere et sic habeto, non esse te
mortalem, sed corpus hoc; non enim tu es, quem forma ista declarat; sed
_mens cuiusque is est quisque_, non ea figura quae digito demonstrari
potest."[817] Here is the body plainly losing, the soul gaining
importance. But he goes still further: "_deum igitur te scito esse_: si
quidem deus est qui viget qui sentit qui meminit: qui providet, qui tam
regit et moderatur et movet id corpus cui propositus est, quam hunc
mundum ille princeps de