care is for the universe at large: thus much should suffice. His gods
are better than the Stoic gods, who sit aloof from all human things,
untroubled and uncaring, but his personal hope is hardly stronger.
On this point he says little, though there are many allusions to death
as the natural end; doubtless he expected his soul one day to be
absorbed into the universal soul, since nothing comes out of nothing,
and nothing can be annihilated. His mood is one of strenuous weariness;
he does his duty as a good soldier, waiting for the sound of the trumpet
which shall sound the retreat; he has not that cheerful confidence
which led Socrates through a life no less noble, to a death which was
to bring him into the company of gods he had worshipped and men whom
he had revered.

But although Marcus Aurelius may have held intellectually that
his soul was destined to be absorbed, and to lose consciousness
of itself, there were times when he felt, as all who hold
it must sometimes feel, how unsatisfying is such a creed.
Then he gropes blindly after something less empty and vain.
'Thou hast taken ship,' he says, 'thou hast sailed, thou art
come to land, go out, if to another life, there also shalt
thou find gods, who are everywhere.' There is more in this
than the assumption of a rival theory for argument's sake.
If worldly things 'be but as a dream, the thought is not
far off that there may be an awakening to what is real.
When he speaks of death as a necessary change, and points out that
nothing useful and profitable can be brought about without change,
did he perhaps think of the change in a corn of wheat, which is not
quickened except it die? Nature's marvellous power of recreating
out of Corruption is surely not confined to bodily things.
Many of his thoughts sound like far-off echoes of St. Paul;