58 THE APOSTLE PAUL beasts or gold or silver, but of a pious and good heart. There is none, I repeat, who would not be fired with love, if it were granted us to see an ideal picture such as that. Now, it is true, our eyes are blinded by many things ; but if we would purify them and clear our vision, then we should be able to see virtue beneath the veil of the body, beneath the burden of poverty, humility and ignominy: we should see her beauty even under the most sordid vestments” (Ep. exv. 8 f.). It is not to be wondered at that sayings of this kind have made the impression upon many that Seneca must have known Jesus Christ and have been referring to Him when he spoke with such enthusiasm of the inspiring power of the ideal of ethical per- fection embodied in a person. But this is out of the question. For the historical student, the special importance of these sayings consists precisely in the fact that they are not dependent on the Christian Gospel, and are therefore of the more significance as witnesses of a widespread ethico-religious mode of thought and feeling in the Greco-Roman world of that period, which, from its close affinity with the Christian view had, among the heathen, prepared the soil for the Gospel. There was here a morality which led a man to look into his heart and freed him from the outer world, with its allurements and its terrors; which purified his soul by demanding the mastery of the passions, especially of sensuality ; which taught him to find in this inner freedom and purity the dignity of the human personality, and called into being a respect for the individual as a man; which, finally, found in the rational God-