Chapter XX. What the Same Sect Think Concerning the Soul

‘THE seed, says Zeno, which man emits is breath combined with moisture, a portion and fragment of soul, and a blending of the parents’ seed, and a concrete mixture of the various parts of the soul. For this, having the same laws as the universe, when emitted into the womb is caught up by another breath, and made a portion of the female’s soul and grows into one with it, and being there stirred and kindled by it grows in secret, continually receiving additions to the moisture and increasing of itself.’

And a little further on he adds:

‘With regard to the soul, Cleanthes, in setting forth the doctrines of Zeno for comparison with the other physicists, says that Zeno calls the soul an exhalation endowed with sensation, just as Heracleitus does. For wishing to make it clear that there is a perpetual production of intelligent souls by exhalation, he compared them to rivers, speaking as follows: “Though men step into the same rivers, the waters that from time to time flow over them are different”: and souls likewise are exhaled from moisture.

‘So then Zeno, like Heracleitus, represents the soul as an exhalation. And he says that it is sensitive for the reason that the ruling part is capable of being impressed through the senses from real and substantial objects, and receiving their impressions. For these are special properties of soul.’

After other remarks he adds:

‘And they say that there is a soul in the universe, which they call ether, and air surrounding the laud and sea, and exhalations from them; and that to this soul are attached all the other souls, both those in animals, and those in the surrounding air; for the souls of the dead still continue.

‘Some say that the soul of the universe is eternal, but that the others at death are absorbed into union with it: and that every soul has in it a certain ruling faculty, which is life, and sensation, and appetite.’

And a little further on he proceeds:

‘They say that the soul is created and perishable, but does not perish immediately when freed from the body, but abides for some time by itself; the soul of the good until the resolution of all things into fire, but the soul of the foolish for certain periods of time.

‘But the continued existence of souls they thus describe, that we ourselves on becoming souls continue to exist, having been separated from the body and changed into the smaller substance of the soul. But the souls of the foolish and of irrational animals perish together with their bodies.’

Such are the doctrines of the Stoic philosophy collected out of the Epitomaeof Arius Didymus. But in answer to their absurd opinion about the soul, it is sufficient to quote the refutations briefly stated in the following words in Longinus, one of our own age: [1]