His confidence in facing death sprang from no sure hope of personal immortality. He believed in an immortality for both soul and body and that the gods would care for both; but whether the life beyond would be a continuance of the personal life of time, or whether this human soul should be swallowed up in the great world-soul he knew not. “You have embarked upon life: when you have made your voyage debark without more ado. If you happen to land in another world there will be gods to take care of you there; but if it be your fortune to drop into nothingness, why then you will be no more solicited with pleasure and pain. Then you will have done drudging for your outer covering, which is the more unworthy in proportion as that which serves it is worthy: for the one is all soul, intelligence and divinity, whereas the other is dirt and corruption.” Yet elsewhere, though admitting the possibility of the absorption of the human soul into the world-soul he rejects the possibility of utter annihilation. “What is sprung from earth dissolves to earth again and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.” But again he adds: “When a man dies, and the spirit is let loose into the air, it holds out for some time, after which it is changed, diffused, or knotted into flame, or else absorbed into the generative principle of the Universe.” This is the best he can promise us: yet how miserable a mockery of human aspirations it is! how unsatisfying to the longings of the soul, which seeks in the spiritual for the most truly and intensely real and in the spiritual and the spiritualised, thus truly real, for the truest beauty!