they are not essential to its exercise, as the Peripatetics thought. If ivory and gold are wanting, the art of Phidias will show itself in baser materials: so the wise man will show his mastery in the art of life, alike in ⚫ poverty as in wealth, in adversity as in prosperity. Nay, the less favourable his circumstances are, the greater is the call on the resources of his art, and the more glorious his success if he succeeds in acting the virtuous part. A good man struggling with adversity is a spectacle worthy of God'. Until we have learnt the lesson that our happiness can neither be increased nor diminished by the presence or absence of anything outside of ourselves, anything which is not in our own power, we can never attain to that inner calm, which is the essence of true happiness.

This distinction between things in our power, and things not in our power, is one on which the Stoics laid great stress. By the former they meant things which we could do or acquire if we willed, such as our opinions, our affections, desires and aversions; by the latter they meant things which we could not do or acquire if we willed, such as natural constitution of body, wealth, honour, rank, &c., but in regard to these last our judgment of them is in our own power, we can train ourselves to think of them as unimportant. Thus it is in our power to discipline the mind in the way of controlling or suppressing some emotions, generating and encouraging others. The grand aim of the Stoical system was to strengthen the governing reason and to enthrone it as a

1 Seneca Epist. LXXXV, De providentia, c. 2.

2 τὰ ἐφ' ἡμῖν, the sphere of προαίρεσις according to Aristotle Eth.

fixed habit and character, which would control by counter-suggestions the impulse arising at each special moment, particularly all disturbing terrors or allurements, by the reflection that the objects which appear to be desirable, or the contrary, are not really such, but are only made to appear so by false and curable associations. Nothing can really harm us unless we choose to make it do so by allowing it to conquer our reason and will'.

Pleasure is a natural concomitant (èmiyévvηua) of activity, but is not a natural end: not even if we count as pleasure that high delight (χαρά as opposed to ἡδονή), which belongs to virtuous activity, for pleasure regarded in itself has a tendency to lead man away from the true end, viz. acting not for self, but for the whole. On this ground Chrysippus condemned Plato and Aristotle for preferring the contemplative to the practical life, alleging that the former was merely a higher kind of self-indulgence. Man is born for society, he is a member of the great body which includes all rational creatures within it: if he forgets his relation to other men, and only cares to gratify his intellectual tastes, he abnegates his proper place in the world. The feeling of common membership in one body binds each not to justice only but to beneficence and to mutual help3: above all it constitutes the firmest bond of friendship between those who act up to that membership, so that every wise man is dear to all who are wise, even though he may be personally unknown to them*.

1 See Grote's Aristotle, II. p. 446.

2 Seneca Ep. XCV. 52 membra sumus corporis magni. Natura nos cognatos edidit; Cic. Off. III. 32.

3 Cic. Off. 1. 20.

4 Cic. N. D. I. 121.

But while on the one hand the consciousness of our being thus bound up with others, as parts of a common whole, supplies a motive for action and forbids all exclusive self-regard, as far as feeling is concerned; on the other hand the consciousness that the individual reason (τὸ λογιστικόν, τὸ ἡγεμονικόν) in each man is a portion of the Universal Reason, a revelation to him personally of the Divine Will',-this preserves intact the individuality of each, and enables and requires him to act and think for himself, and to stand alone, regardless of the opinions and wishes of the world outside. It is this sense of independence towards man and of responsibility towards God which especially distinguishes the Stoic morality from that which preceded it. The Stoics may be said to have introduced into philosophical ethics the conception of Duty, involving obligation, as distinguished from that of Good, regarded as the desirable or the useful or the beautiful, and of Virtue as the way to this. Not that Duty is with them mere obedience to an external law;

1 See Chrysippus in Diogenes VII. 88, 'We call by the name of Zeus the Right Reason which pervades the universe;' Zeno in Cic. N. D. 1. 36 ‘God is the divine law of nature, commanding what is right, forbidding what is wrong,' Cic. Leg. II. 10, and I. 18, 'Law is first the mind and reason of Jupiter, and then reason in the mind of man;' Leg. I. 33, 'To whom nature has given reason, to them she has given law;' Chrysippus in Plut. Comm. Not. p. 1076 'not even the smallest particle can exist otherwise than as God wills” (ἄλλως ἔχειν ἀλλ ̓ ἢ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Διὸς βούλησιν); also passages from Seneca referred to in a previous note.

2 Compare the Stoic definition of right and wrong as that which is commanded or forbidden by law, τὸ κατόρθωμα νόμου πρόσταγμα εἶναι, τὸ δ ̓ ἁμάρτημα νόμου ἀπαγόρευμα Plut. Sto. Rep. II. I, and other passages quoted by Zeller p. 245.

it is also the following of the highest natural impulse (opμn)'. But impulse by itself is no trustworthy guide. On the contrary it is one chief work of reason in man to subdue and eradicate his irrational impulses. These passions (mán), as they are called, originate in a perversion of the reason itself. The four principal are pleasure and pain, which may be defined as false beliefs of present good or evil; hope and fear, which are similar beliefs in reference to the future. No man can be called virtuous who has not got rid of all such beliefs and arrived at the state of pure ἀπάθεια. We may distinguish different virtues in thought, as the Stoics themselves summed up their teaching on this subject under the four Cardinal Virtues, which represent four principal aspects of the one Honestum or Decorum; but in fact no virtue can exist apart from the rest. He who has a right judgment and right intention is perfectly virtuous, he who is without right judgment and intention is perfectly vicious. There is no mean. The wise man is perfectly happy, the fool perfectly miserable.all the actions of the former are wise and good; all the actions of the latter foolish and bad. There may

be a progress towards wisdom, but, until the actual moment of conversion, even those who are advancing (oi πρокÓπτоντES) must still be classed among the fools3.

Thus in the original Stoicism we have the strange

1 See Zeller III. 1, p. 2233.

2 So Aristotle had said that all other virtue is involved in opóvŋois. Eth. VI. 13, VII. 2.

3 See Plut. Mor. p. 1058. Among the Stoics you go to bed stupid and ignorant and unjust and intemperate, a pauper and a slave; you wake up in a few hours a king, or rather a God, rich and wise and temperate and just.'

M. P.

II

union of a highly ideal ethics with a materialistic philosophy. But it was impossible to maintain this uncompromising idealism in practice. The later Stoics found themselves compelled to admit that, apart from virtue and vice, the absolute Good and Evil, there were preferences to be made among things indifferent. Some of these, such as bodily health, mental endowments, even wealth and position, were allowed to have comparative value, and, as such, were called "ponyμéva, producta or praeposita, 'preferable,' while their opposites were termed άложроηyμéva, rejecta, 'undesirable'; and the name adiάpopa was now limited to such things as were entirely neutral and could not influence choice. In like manner it was allowed that, besides the perfectly virtuous actions of the wise man (κaтоρbúμатa, perfecta officia), there was a subordinate class of appropriate actions (kałŃKOVτα, media officia), which might be performed by one who had not attained to perfection, or which might have reference to some preferable end other than the absolute good. Again, since they were compelled to allow that their perfectly wise man, whom they vaunted to be equal to Zeus, had never existed, they found it necessary to allow a positive value to роколý, progress towards wisdom, and to self-control as contrasted with absolute apathy.

The Stoics paid great attention to the subject of Natural Theology and pleased themselves with discovering evidence, in the external universe, of a creative intelligence and a providential care for man. Cicero gives the Stoical argument on this head in the Second Book of his Natura Deorum. Holding, as they did, the optimist theory of the perfection of the universe, they were bound