are quoted above[172] may be added the following, perhaps the most precise of all: ‘If souls survive death, how can the air hold them from all eternity? How, we reply, does earth hold the bodies of generation after generation committed to the grave? Just as on earth, after a certain term of survival, change and dissolution of substance makes room for other dead bodies, so too the souls transmuted into air, after a period of survival, change by processes of diffusion and of ignition, and are resumed into the seminal principle of the universe, and in this way make room for others to take up their habitation in their stead. Such is the natural answer, assuming the survival of souls[173].’ Such are the last words of Stoicism, not wholly satisfying either to knowledge or to aspiration, but assuredly based on a wide outlook and a keen discrimination. [Sidenote: Men and women.] =300.= The whole nature of man, as discussed up to this point, is common to every individual born into the world, with some exceptions dependent on age or temperament which have been explained incidentally. It remains to discuss shortly the important differences which result from sex, nationality, and location. There seems every reason to believe that the equality of men and women, though at the time seemingly paradoxical, was generally accepted by the earlier Stoics, and adopted as a practical principle in Stoic homes. The whole treatment of human nature by the Stoics applies equally to man and woman, and points to the conclusion that as moral agents they have the same capacities and the same responsibilities[174]. Seneca in writing to a great lady of philosophical sympathies states this as his firm conviction[175], and the lives of many Stoic wives and daughters (to whom we shall refer in a later chapter)[176] showed it to have a firm basis in fact. We need attach no great importance to those more distinctively masculine views which Seneca occasionally expresses, to the effect that woman is hot-tempered, thoughtless, and lacking in self-control[177], or to the Peripatetic doctrine that man is born to rule, women to obey[178]; for these sentiments, however welcome to his individual correspondents, were not rooted in Stoic theory nor exemplified in the Roman society of his own days. [Sidenote: Class and race.]