The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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96 THE STOIC CREED
First, whether the absorption takes place immediately
on the death of the individual ;
or whether the individual
continues to exist as an individual till the great con
flagration ;
or whether he falls by degrees
into the
was
Deity, through a process of gradual purification,
not dogmatically determined. For each of these
positions high Stoical authority could be quoted ;
and
high authority could be quoted also for suspense of
judgment on the point.
All that even Aurelius can say
is : "Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage,
thou hast come to shore ; get out. If, indeed, to
another life, there is no want of gods, not even there.
But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to
be held by pains and pleasures." 1 And even among
those who maintained that the individual soul lived on
till the conflagration (which was the earlier opinion),
there was doubt as
to whether this held of all souls or
only of the souls of the wise ;
Cleanthes upholding
the first of these opinions, and Chrysippus the
second. 2
Next, whether, when the
individual is absorbed, the
past experience of his life on earth has any effect, by
way of unconscious influence or impulse, in urging on
or causing his return to individual existence,
plain. It is in itself quite
is not
conceivable that desire of
individual life
might remain, or, at any rate (to put it
more exactly), that the fact of a man s having existed
individually here might leave a permanent effect, which
would tell, though unconsciously to the man himself,
in procuring his future reissuing from the divine source.
1
Med. iii. 3.
See also Epictetus, Diss. iii. 13, 24.
See Diog. Laert. vii. 157.