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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 20

On the approaches to philosophy

108:20

Book Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.

Book Description: The final volume of Seneca's moral letters. Common Stoic themes emerge again and again: the unreliability of fortune, the ability to form Stoic resolve, and the importance of virtue.

20.

When Sotion had set forth this doctrine, supplementing it with his own proofs, he would say: “You do not believe that souls are assigned, first to one body and then to another, and that our so-called death is merely a change of abode?

You do not believe that in cattle, or in wild beasts, or in creatures of the deep, the soul of him who was once a man may linger?

You do not believe that nothing on this earth is annihilated, but only changes its haunts?

And that animals also have cycles of progress and, so to speak, an orbit for their souls, no less than the heavenly bodies, which revolve in fixed circuits?

Great men have put faith in this idea;