ABSTRACT
Starting with the popular distinction between body and soul, the authors find that the biologist and the physician alike are preoccupied with the study of the body, that is, of physiology. The dualism of body and soul appears in a sharply defined shape in Persism, and upon it depends the popular dogma of the immortality of the soul, which reached the Greco-Roman world from a Persian source. The characteristic attribute of the soul is that it is self-moved. Although in this point the Stoic's agree with Plato, they do not go on to name life as another attribute, for they do not agree with the argument of the Phaedo that the soul, having life as an inseparable attribute, is incapable of mortality. The Stoic account of the functions of the soul displayed in the ordinary activities of life is either defective or mutilated.
