So an order was sent to Seneca that he must die. It was received without alarm. As time was refused him wherein to remake his will, he said to the friends around him that he would bequeath to them the example of his life. He checked their tears and asked them where were their precepts of philosophy and the fortitude that their studies should have taught them? Did they not know the cruelty of Nero? Was it not to be expected that he would make an end of his master and tutor after murdering his mother and his brother? He begged his wife Paulina not to enter upon an endless sorrow. The veins of his limbs were then opened that he might bleed to death, a process that had to be accelerated by a vapor bath. During his lingering distress he conversed with those attending him. When Seneca passed away, Nero, though feeling a grim satisfaction, had really lost the best counselor he ever had. [Illustration: SENECA] In many of his writings, this great philosopher rose to a lofty height of ethical insight and discrimination. He seems to have been truly anxious to raise the moral tone of society. No man up to his time had apprehended more clearly than did he that moral light with which God is ready to light every man that cometh into the world. No man wrote better of sincerity, courage, contentment, justice, kindness to others even to the weakest slave, mercy to the wicked, the beauty of unselfishness, and the mind’s possible superiority to its environment. He was a great expounder of natural religion as studied by his observation and by his conscience. Here, for example are a few of his maxims: If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade ourselves of this: that there is not one of us without fault. We shall be wise if we desire but little. If each man takes account of himself and measures his own body he will know how little it can contain and for how short a time. Man is born for mutual assistance. You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself. We are members of one great body.--Let him who hath conferred a favor hold his tongue about it. Man’s best gifts lie beyond the power of man either to give or to take away. The Universe, the grandest and loveliest work of nature, and the intellect, which was created to observe and admire, are our special and eternal possessions.