The conceptions of the Stoics, especially in the form presented by Seneca, found an ardent and brilliant exponent in Marcus Aurelius, whose “Thoughts” are known to all the world. He had much to say of the problem of death and of the attitude of the philosopher towards it. “Death,” said Marcus Aurelius, “like birth, is one of nature’s mysteries. In the two are present the same elements: in the one case in the phase of combination, in the other in that of dissolution.” In death “there is nothing repugnant to the essence of an intelligent being, nor to the general plan of our nature.” But his ideas on death were vague. “Death may perhaps be a dispersal or resolution into atoms, or an annihilation in the sense of extinction or deplacement.” “Alexander of Macedon and his mule-driver were reduced at death to the same condition, that is to say they returned alike to the originating principle of the universe, or one and the other were scattered as atoms.” Although he was definitely a deist, Marcus Aurelius was undecided as to the immortality of the soul. “If souls have not disappeared,” he said, “how can the air contain the eternal generations of them?” “Remember well,” he said in another place, “that that feeble and composite creature, your soul, will one day resolve into its atoms; the faint spark of life will be extinguished, or be assigned to some other dwelling-place.” Clearly enough, there was no consoling hope of a future life to be derived from these halting dubieties. It was needful to replace by some other anodyne the belief that for so long had brought comfort to poor humanity. Marcus Aurelius tried to counteract the fear of death by the following reflection: “To fear death is to fear either being deprived of all feeling or being subjected to some other kind of feeling. But, if we are deprived of all feeling, we shall have no evil to fear; if we are to find new kinds of sensations, our existence will be different, but still existence.” However, he probably realised the weakness of such a consolation, for he tried to link the problem of death with the general principles of human conduct.