But if the Greek’s physical theory stood in the way of his conceiving clearly the human personality in this life, much more did it impede his conception of that personality as continuing after death. For as the union of a portion of the divine reason with matter constituted man, and as death put an end to that union, the compound being ceased to exist, the portion of the divine reason reverted to its source, but the sensitive soul, as well as the body, was dissolved and came to nothing. There was in his mind no “individual substance of a rational nature” to form the basis of identity, and maintain the conception of personality. In the absence of this, he who had felt, thought, and acted, was no more. He could not therefore receive retribution for his deeds, since there was no personal agent on whom the retribution was to fall. 3. A god who was not personal and did not make man,—man in whom freewill, the mark of personality, was not recognised, so long as he lived, and in whom after death no personal agent continued to exist,—these correspond to each other, and these were the last result of Græco-Roman philosophic thought up to the time of Claudius. But what sort of duty did man, being such, owe to such a god? Cicero’s book on Offices had been written upwards of eighty years, but nothing that followed it during that time equalled it in reputation or ability. It was the best product that his Roman thought could draw from all the preceding Grecian schools: and it was accepted for centuries as the standard of heathen morality. Let us, then, first note that in this book(457) there is nothing like a recognition of God as the Creator and Common Father; no call upon the human soul to love him as such, and for his own perfections; no thought that the duty of man consists in becoming like to him, nor his reward in attaining that likeness. The absence of such a thought gives its character to the whole book, and measures its level. The second point to be noted is, that the happiness of man consists not in being like God, and consequently, in union with him, but in virtue, which is living according to nature. In his reasonable nature everyone possesses a sufficient standard of moral action under every circumstance which may arise. Thirdly, throughout the whole of his treatise Cicero makes no use of the doctrine of man’s immortality. His happiness, then, is left to consist in virtue—life according to reason, which again is life according to nature—without respect to any future state of existence. Now, if Cicero stood alone in these three points, his book would only represent his own authority, but he is in fact the mouthpiece herein of that whole preceding heathen philosophy which he criticised, and from which he selected. Even Plato himself, by far the highest and best of Greek philosophers in this respect, though he had in single expressions indicated that the happiness of man was to be made like