But there was against popular opinion and religion, which attached an idea of infamy to self-murder, a philosophical reaction which, among the Stoics, led to an entirely contrary moral judgment. The powerful sect of the Porch caused the doctrine to prevail that suicide was in certain cases commendable. It saw in this end the supreme guarantee of the wise man’s freedom, and praised those who by voluntary death had withdrawn from an intolerable life. Cato of Utica, who killed himself lest he should survive liberty, was held to be the wise man’s ideal, and as worthy of apotheosis as Hercules. He himself, who is shown to us by the historians as reading and rereading Plato’s _Phaedo_ before he pierced himself with his sword,[349] certainly hoped for the immortality of heroic souls. Here, as on other points, the Neo-Pythagoreans, and the Neo-Platonists after them, brought the minds of men back to the old religious beliefs. Plotinus, yielding to the opinion which still prevailed in his time, still authorises suicide in certain cases, but we know that his exhortations dissuaded his pupil Porphyry from putting an end to his days, when he was seized with a disgust for life. This latter philosopher afterwards resolutely opposed the Stoic doctrine. Although the soul, said the Pythagoreans and Platonists, is enclosed in the body as in a prison, in order to suffer chastisement, it is forbidden by God to escape therefrom by its own act. If it do so escape, it incurs from the masters of its fate infinitely harder penalties. It must await the hour willed by these masters, and then it can rejoice in the deliverance which it obtains at the term of old age. If it itself break the link which joins it to the body, far from ridding itself of servitude, it remains chained to the corpse, for necessarily it is subject to passion at the moment of death and thus contracts impure desires. The only liberation worthy of the wise man is that of the soul which still dwells in the body but succeeds in freeing itself from all fleshly leanings and in thus rising, by the force of reason, from earth to heaven.[350] The prohibition of voluntary death anticipating the hour fixed by Providence for each man, was strengthened and enforced everywhere by the Christian Church.