These verses express the same great thought in various forms: death is disappearance into the depths of divine nature. It is not for the preservation of an ephemeral personality that we must hope. Our soul, a fleeting energy detached from the All, must enter again into the All as must our body: both are absorbed by God, “When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.”[46] The fiery breath of our intelligence is gathered, as are the matter and the humours of our organism, into the inexhaustible reservoir which produced them, as one day the earth and the heavens will be gathered thither also. All must be engulfed in one whole, must lose itself in one forgetfulness. When man has reached the term of his fate, he faints into the one power which forms and leads the universe, just as the tired stars will be extinguished in it, when their days shall be accomplished. Resistance to the supreme law is vain and painful; rebellion against the irresistible order of things is impious. The great virtue taught by Stoicism is that of submission to the fatality which guides the world, of joyous acceptance of the inevitable. Philosophic literature and the epitaphs present to us, repeatedly and in a thousand forms, the idea that we cannot strive against omnipotent necessity, that the rule of this rigid master must be borne without tears or recriminations. The wise man, who destroys within himself desire of any happenings, enjoys even during this existence divine calm in the midst of tribulations, but those whom the vicissitudes of life drive or attract, who let illusions seduce or grieve them, will at last obtain remission of their troubles when they reach the tranquil haven of death. This thought is expressed by a distich which often recurs on tombs, in Greek and in Latin. “I have fled, escaped. Farewell, Hope and Fortune. I have nothing more to do with you. Make others your sport.”[47]