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With regard indeed to the nature of the highest god we may, with Senaca represent the difference between the two schools as a question of the senses against the intellect, but we shall see presently that the Stoics regarded the intellect itself as being a kind of body.
But most of the Stoics did not look at them at all, feeling that their soft hearts could not stand these painful sights, and anxious not to spoil their dinners. Gregory did not see them either, for it so happened that he was looking at the sky, and just then the two girls crossed the road and were lost among the passers-by, for they were not dogs, who could smell out the kind of man he was. "Mr.
Of these opinions there were three which from their definiteness were well calculated to lay hold on the Roman mind. The first was that of the Stoics, that virtue is the only good; the second that of the Epicureans, that pleasure is the end of man; the third that of the Academy, that nothing can be known.
How many of us have drawn inspiration from the noble reflections contained in the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius and in the Discourses of Epictetus, those great Stoics! The unadorned translations of George Long will serve to introduce us to these.
We must bear in mind that the attempt to make a critical examination into the foundations of our knowledge, and to determine its scope, is by no means a new thing. Among the Greeks, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics, all attacked the problem.
In the conduct of those monarchs we may trace the utmost lines of vice and virtue; the most exalted perfection, and the meanest degeneracy of our own species. The mildness of Marcus Aurelius, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable, and the only defective, part of his character.
R and P might have angled for five hours, and the result of their assiduity was as diverse as pain is to pleasure, whatever the Stoics may have said to the contrary; for P caught fifteen salmon, and R not one. Disappointed, no doubt, that such trifling profit should succeed to so much labour, R wound up his ten or twelve yards of cat-gut, and desired the boatmen to row ashore.
After dinner, over the wine, there was much learned talk, and this not other than cheerful in tone. But when the conversation happened to turn on one of the favorite maxims of the Stoics, "Only the good man is free; the bad are slaves," Cato expressed himself with an energy and even a fierceness that made the company suspect some terrible resolve.
Plato and the mathematicians, that the sun, Venus, and Mercury hold equal measures in their motions. Metrodorus says that all the fixed stars derive their light from the sun. Heraclitus and the Stoics, that earthly exhalations are those by which the stars are nourished. Aristotle, that the heavenly bodies require no nutriment, for they being eternal cannot be obnoxious to corruption.
But he, taking a stand on common sense, fought for morality, as did Reid and Beattie, when they combated the skepticism of Hume. Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, recommended by Plato and Aristotle, seemed only a covert recommendation of selfish enjoyment.
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