s contrasting tenets of individual Greek philosophers,
from the age of Pherecydes to that of Iamblichus, in relation to a
future life. Not a few held, with Empedocles, that human life is a
penal state, the doom of such immortal souls as for guilt have
been disgraced and expelled from heaven. "Man is a fallen god
condemned to wander on the earth, sky aspiring but sense clouded."
Purged by a sufficient penance, he returns to his former godlike
existence. "When, leaving this body, thou comest to the free
ether, thou shalt be no longer a mortal, but an undying god."
Notions of this sort fairly represent no small proportion of the
speculations upon the fate of the soul which often reappear
throughout the course of Greek literature. Another class of
philosophers are represented by such names as Marcus Antoninus,
who, comparing death to disembarkation at the close of a voyage,
says, "If you land upon another life, it will not be empty of
gods: if you land in nonentity, you will have done with pleasures,
pains, and drudgery."32 And again he writes, "If souls survive,
how has ethereal space made room for them all from eternity? How
has the earth found room for all the bodies buried in it? The
solution of the latter problem will solve the former. The corpse
turns to dust and makes space for another: so the spirit, let
loose into the air, after a while dissolves, and is either renewed
into another soul or absorbed into the universe. Thus room is made
for succession."33 These passages, it will be observed, leave the
survival of the soul at all entirely hypothetical, and, even
supposing it to survive, allow it but a temporary duration. Such
was the common view of the great sect of the Stoics. They all
agreed that there was no real immortality for the soul; but they
differed greatly as to the time of its dissolution. In the words
of Cicero, "Diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper, negant:" they say
souls endure for a long time, but not forever. Cleanthes taught
that the intensity of existence after death would depend on the
strength or weakness of the particular soul. Chrysippus held that
only the souls of the wise and good would survive at all.34
Panatius said the soul always died with the body, because it was
born with it, which he proved by the resemblances of children's
souls to those of their parents.35 Seneca has a great many
contradictory passages on this subject

31 Hist. Anc. Phil. p. iii. b. ix. ch. 4.

32 Meditations, lib.