The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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PHYSICS: NATURE, GOD, THE SOUL 97
This point, however, seems not to have occurred to the
Stoics. The doctrine of Unconscious Will had to await
Schopenhauer.
Nor, thirdly, did the Stoics settle whether any
recollection of former states of existence remains to the
individual when he does return again to the earth, and
the new cycle runs. Had they accepted the Platonic
doctrine of Ideas and Reminiscence, their answer
would, presumably, have been in the affirmative. But
that doctrine was disowned by them. They maintained,
however, that the Socrates of a future period would
not be numerically one with the Socrates of the present
the two would simply be alike. And if, as some
Stoics held, this similarity between the two Socrateses
was accompanied by marked differences, then, perhaps,
an answer in the negative would be necessitated.
But, all this apart, the noteworthy point is, that
(from the time of Cleanthes, at any rate) Immortality,
as continued, though not endless, existence after death,
was a doctrine of the Stoics ;
and this not merely
such as the Comtists or
"subjective" immortality,
Positivists of to-day promise us as our sole consolation
namely, posthumous fame, or the continuance of a
man s name and influence among posterity, the abiding
effect of his life and work upon succeeding generations.
This kind of immortality they admitted, and they even
regarded it as a
good
(at least the later Stoics did) ;
but, with moments of inconsistency and vacillation,
they demanded something more. While, on occasion,
Seneca could say, as he contemplated the possibility of
a young man s
death,
he lived,
and passed away to
posterity, and gave himself to be a memory," he was
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