=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. [Sidenote: 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