11. Similar signs by which we may distinguish the souls of righteous men, since we cannot see them with our bodily eyes. 12. Concerning the Soul's state after death, and how it will be affected by the general resurrection. The treatise ends with a prayer to Christ to preserve the body in good health, that it may be in tune with the harmony of the soul; to give reason the ascendancy over the flesh; and to keep the mind in happy equipoise, neither so strong as to be puffed up with pride, nor so languid as to fail of its proper powers. [Sidenote: Cassiodorus retires to the cloister.] The line of thought indicated by the 'De Anima' led, in such a country as Italy, at such a time as the Gothic War, to one inevitable end--the cloister. It can have surprised none of the friends of Cassiodorus when the veteran statesman announced his intention of spending the remainder of his days in monastic retirement. He was now sixty years of age[73]; his wife, if he had ever married, was probably by this time dead; and we hear nothing of any children for whose sake he need have remained longer in the world. The Emperor would probably have received him gladly into his service, but Cassiodorus had now done with politics. The dream of his life had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. That dream was now scattered to the winds. Providence had made it plain that not by this bridge was civilisation to pass over from the Old World to the New. Cassiodorus accepted the decision, and consecrated his old age to religious meditation and to a work even more important than any of his political labours (though one which must be lightly touched on here), the preservation by the pens of monastic copyists of the Christian Scriptures, and of the great works of classical antiquity. [Footnote 73: Fifty-eight, if the retirement was in 538.] [Sidenote: He founds two monasteries at Scyllacium.]