If any one of us is not happy all the time, except at the rare instants when toothache, or the news of a friend's illness or death, or a bad turn in our investments takes us by surprise—if happiness is not the dominant tone of our ordinary life, it is simply because we do not want it, in that thoughtful, enterprising, insistent way in which the scholar wants knowledge, or the business man wants money, or the politician wants votes. Whoever is willing to pay the price in prudent planning of his daily pleasures, in relentless exclusion of the enterprises and indulgences that cost more pain than they can return in pleasure; whoever will cut out remorselessly the things in his past life on which he cannot dwell with pleasure, and lop off the considerations which give rise to dread; whoever is willing to pay this Epicurean price for happiness can have it just as soon and just as often as he pays down the cash of a faithful and consistent application of these principles. If any man goes about the world in a chronic unhappiness, it is ninety-nine per cent the fault, not of his circumstances, but of himself. There is not a reader of this book whose circumstances are so black that another person, in those same circumstances, would not find a way to be supremely and dominantly, if not exclusively and continuously, happy. There is not a reader of this book so rich, so blessed with family and friends, so occupied and diverted, but that another person in those same circumstances would be miserable himself, and a source of misery to everybody with whom he came in contact. Epicurus is right, that happiness is up at auction all the time, and sold in lots to suit the purchaser whenever he bids high enough. And the price is not exorbitant: prudence to plan for the simple pleasures that can be had for the asking; resolution to cut off the pleasures that come too high; determination to amputate our reflections the instant they develop morbid symptoms, and to take an anti-toxine against fret and worry, the moment we feel the approach of their contagious atmosphere; concentration, to live in a self-chosen present from which profitless regret and unprofitable anxieties, projected from the past or borrowed from the future, are absolutely banished.

It is high time to treat melancholy, depression, gloom, fretfulness, unhappiness, not merely as diseases, but as the inexcusable follies, the intolerable vices, the unpardonable sins which a sane and wholesome Epicureanism pronounces them to be.

The Epicurean principle, then, forbids us to go whining, whimpering, and weeping through this glorious and otherwise cheery world, making ourselves a burden and nuisance to our friends; and tells us frankly that if we are so much as tempted to such melancholy living, it is because we are too improvident, too slothful, too stupid to cast out these devils, which a little plain fare, hard work, outdoor exercise, vigorous play, and unworried rest would exorcise forever. It bids us put in place of these banished sighs and groans and tears, the laughter, song, and shout that "spin the great wheel of earth about." We may sum it all up in the picture of a worthy Epicurean's day.

After a night of sleep too sound to harbour an unpleasant dream, he greets the hour of rising with a shout and bound, plunges into the bath, meets with gusto the shock it gives, and rejoices in the glow of exhilaration a vigorous rubbing brings; greets the household "with morning face and morning heart," eager to share with the family the meal, the news, the outlook on the day, resolved like Pippa to "waste no wavelet of his twelve-hours' treasure"; then, whether work calls him forth immediately or not, takes a few minutes of brisk walking and deep breathing in the open air until he feels the great forces of earth, air, and sunshine pulsing in his veins; then greets the work of kitchen or factory, office or field, schoolroom or counter, bench or desk with an inward cheer, as something to put forth his surplus energy upon; and through the swift, precious forenoon hours delights in the mastery over difficulty his stored-up power imparts; takes the noon-day meal gayly and leisurely with congenial people; through the early afternoon hours does the lighter portion of the day's work if he must; gets out for an hour or two in the open air if he may, with horse, or wheel, or automobile, or boat, or racket, or golf clubs, or skates, or rod, or gun, or at least a friend and two stout walking shoes; comes to the evening meal in the family circle widened to include a few welcome guests, or at the home of some hospitable host, in garments from which all trace of stain or hint of strain has been removed, to share the best things market and purse afford, served in such wise as to prolong the opportunity for the interchange of wit and banter, cursory discussion and kindly compliment; spends the evening in quiet reading or public entertainment, games with his children or visiting with friends; and then returns again to sleep with such a sense of gratitude for the dear joys of the day as sends an echo of "All's well" down through even the shadowy substance of his unconscious dreams. Surely there are some features of this Epicurean day which we, in our bustling, restless, overelaborated lives, might introduce with great profit to ourselves, and great advantage to the people with whom we are intimately thrown. A series of such days, varied by even happier holidays and Sundays, broken once or twice a year at least by considerable vacations, added together, will make a life which Epicurus says a man may live with satisfaction, and after which he may pass away content.

If there be no other life, let us by all means make the most of this. And if, both here and hereafter, there be a larger life than that perceivable by sense,—as, on deeper grounds than the Epicurean psychology recognises, most of us believe there is,—this healthy, hearty, wholesome determination to live intensely and exclusively in the present is a much more sincere and effective way to develop it than the foolish attempt of a false other-worldliness to anticipate or discount the future, by a half-hearted, far-away affectation of superiority to the simple homely pleasures of to-day.

IV
THE DEFECTS OF EPICUREANISM

Thus far we have pointed out certain valuable elements of truth which Epicureanism contains. Only incidentally have we encountered certain deep defects. Epicurus's "free laugh" at those who attempt to fulfil their political duties, his quiet ignoring of all interests that lie outside his little circle, or reach beyond the grave, his naïve remark about the intrinsic harmlessness of wrong-doing, provided only the wrong-doer could escape the fear of being caught, must have made us aware that there are heights of nobleness, depths of devotion, lengths of endurance, breadths of sympathy altogether foreign to this easy-going, pleasure-seeking view of life. Justice requires us to dwell more explicitly on these Epicurean shortcomings. Much that has been charged against the school in the form of swinish sensuality is the grossest slander. Still there are defects in this view of life which are both logically deducible from its premises, and practically visible in the lives of its consistent disciples.

The fundamental defect of Epicureanism is its false definition of personality. According to Epicurus the person is merely a bundle of appetites and passions; and the gratification of these is made synonymous with the satisfaction of himself. But gratifications are short; while appetites are long. The result is that which Schopenhauer has so conclusively pointed out. During the long periods when desire burns unsatisfied, the balance of pleasure is against us. In the comparatively brief and rare intervals when passions are in process of gratification, the balance can never be more than even. Therefore our account with the world at the end of any period, whether a week or a year or a lifetime, is bound to stand as follows: credit, a few rare, brief moments—moments, too, which have long since vanished into nothingness—when appetites and passions were in process of satisfaction. Debit, the vast majority of moments, amounting in the aggregate to almost the total period considered, when appetites and passions were clamouring for a satisfaction that was not forthcoming. The obvious conclusion from the frequent examination of the Epicurean account-book is that which Schopenhauer so triumphantly demonstrates,—pessimism. The sooner we cease doing business on those terms, the less will be the balance of pain, or unsatisfied desire, against us. To be entirely frank, the devotees of Omar Khayyam would have to confess that it is this note of pessimism, despair, and self-pity, at the sorry contrast of the vast unattainable and the petty attained, which is the secret of his unquestionably fascinating lines. Here the blasé amusement-seeker finds consolation in the fact that a host of other people are also yielding to the temptation to bury the unwelcome consciousness of a self they cannot satisfy in wine, or any other momentary sensuous titillation that will conceal the sense of their spiritual failure—a failure, however, which they are glad to be assured is shared by so many that the sense of it has been dignified by the name of a philosophy and sung by a poet.

Pleasure cannot be sought directly with success; for pleasure comes indirectly as the effect of causes far higher and deeper and wider than any that are recognised in the Epicurean philosophy. Pleasure comes unsought to those who lose themselves in large intellectual, artistic, social, and spiritual interests. But such noble losing of self without thought of gain is explicitly excluded from the consistent Epicurean creed.

In the picture of the Epicurean life already drawn, while domestic and political life have been presupposed as a background, nothing has been said about the sacrifice which one is called upon to make in the support and defence of a pure home and a free country. That was expressly excluded by Epicurus. Whatever attractiveness there was in the picture of the Epicurean life previously presented was largely due to this background of presupposition that this happy life was lived in a well-ordered and stable family, and in a free and just municipal and national life. In fact it is only as a parasite on these great domestic, social, and political institutions which it does nothing to create or maintain, and much to weaken and destroy, that Epicureanism is even a tolerable account of life. If we now paint our picture of the Epicurean man and woman with this background of domestic and civic life withdrawn, the ugliness and meanness of this parasitic Epicureanism will stare us in the face; and while we ought not to forget the valuable lessons it has to teach us, we shall shrink from the completed picture as a thing of deformity and degradation.

Who then is the consistent Epicurean man? He is the club man, who lives in easy luxury and fares sumptuously every day. Everything is done for him. Servants wait on him. He serves nobody, and is responsible for no one's welfare. He has a congenial set of cronies, loosely attached to be sure; and constantly changing, as matrimony, financial reverses, business engagements, professional responsibilities call one or another of his circle away to a more strenuous life. He is a good fellow, genial, free-handed with his set, indifferent to all who are outside. He generally hires some woman to serve for a few months as the instrument of his passions; only to cast her off to be hired by another and another until in due time she dies, he cares not when or how.

As business men these Epicureans are apt to be easy-going, and therefore failures. As debtors, they are the hardest people in the world from whom to collect a bill. As creditors or landlords they are the most merciless in their exactions. Their devotion to the state is generally confined to betting on the elections; the returns of which they watch with the same interest as the results of a horse-race. Their religion is confined to poking fun at the people who are foolish enough to be going to church while they are at their Sunday morning breakfast.

We all know these Epicureans; we do business with them; we meet them socially; we treat them decently; but it is to be hoped that underneath the smooth exterior we all detect their selfish heartlessness. They have taken a doctrine, which, as applied to the good things which are made to minister to our appetites is sound and true, and have perverted it into a moral monstrosity by daring to treat human hearts and social institutions as mere things, mere instruments of their selfish pleasures.

Epicurean women, likewise, abound in every wealthy community. They spend the winter in Florida, New York, or Washington; dividing the rest of the year between the sea-shore, the mountains, and the lakes, with occasional visits to what they call their homes. They must have the best of everything, and assume no responsibility beyond running up bills for their husbands to pay, or to remain unpaid. Their special paradise is foreign travel, and no pension or hotel along the beaten highways of Europe is without its quota of these precious daughters of Epicurus. They flit hither and thither where least ennui and most diversion allures. Two or three years of this irresponsible existence is sufficient to disqualify them for usefulness either in Europe or America, either here or hereafter. When they return, if they ever do, to their native town or city, the drudgery of housekeeping has become intolerable, the responsibilities of social life unendurable, and their poor husbands are glad enough when the restless fit seizes them again and they can be packed off to Egypt, or Russia, or whatever remote corner of the earth remains for their idle hands and restless feet, their empty minds and hollow hearts, to invade with their unearned gold.

There is no guarantee that the Epicurean will be the chaste husband of one wife, or a faithful mother, or a good provider for the family, or a devoted citizen of the republic, or a strenuous servant of art or science, or a heroic martyr in the cause of progress and reform. If all men were Epicureans, the world would speedily retrograde into the barbarism and animalism whence it has slowly and painfully emerged. The great interests of the family, the state, society, and civilisation are not accurately reflected in the feelings of the individual; and if the individual has no guide but feeling, he will prove a traitor to such of these higher interests as may have the misfortune to be intrusted to his pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, unheroic hands.

There are hard things to do and to endure; and if we are to meet them bravely, we shall have to call the Stoic to our aid. There are sordid and trivial things to put up with, or to rise above, and there we may need at times the Platonist and the mystic to show us the eternal reality underneath the temporal appearance. There are problems of conduct to be solved; conflicting claims to be adjusted; and for this the Aristotelian sense of proportion must be developed in our souls. Finally there are other persons to be considered, and one great Personal Spirit living and working in the world; and for our proper attitude toward these persons, human and divine, we must look to the Christian principle. To meet these higher relationships with no better equipment than Epicureanism offers, would be as foolish as to try to run barefoot across a continent, or swim naked across the sea. Naked, barefoot Epicureanism has its place on the sandy beaches and in the sheltered coves of life; but has no business on the mountain tops or in the depths of human experience.

It will not make a man an efficient workman, or a thorough scholar, or a brave soldier, or a public-spirited citizen. It spoils completely every woman whom it gets hold of, unless at the same time she has firm hold on something better; unless she has a husband and children whom she loves, or work in which she delights for its own sake, or friends and interests dearer than life itself. Epicureanism will not lift either man or woman far toward heaven, or save them in the hour when the pains of hell get hold of them. No home can be reared on it. The divorce court is the logical outcome of every marriage between a man and a woman who are both Epicureans. For it is the very essence of Epicureanism to treat others as means; while no marriage is tolerable unless at least one of the two parties is large and unselfish enough to treat the other as an end. No Epicurean state or city could endure longer than it would take for the men who are in politics for their pockets to plunder the people who are out of politics for the same reason. An Epicurean heaven, a place where eternally each should get his fill of pleasure at the expense of everybody else, would be insufferably insipid, incomparably unendurable. It is fortunate for the fame of Epicurus and the permanence of his philosophy that he evaded the necessity of thinking out the conditions of immortal blessedness by his specious dilemma in which he thought to prove that death ends all. As a temporary parasite upon a political and moral order already established, Epicureanism might thrive and flourish; but as a principle on which to rest a decent society here or a hope of heaven hereafter, Epicureanism is utterly lacking. If there were nothing better than Epicureanism in store for us through the long eternities, we all might well pray to be excused, as Epicurus happily believed we should be. For any ultimate delight in life must be rooted in something deeper than self-centred pleasure: it must love persons and seek ends for their own sake; and find its joy, not in the satisfaction of the man as he is, but in the development of that which his thought and love enable him to become.

V
AN EXAMPLE OF EPICUREAN CHARACTER

The clearest example of the shortcomings of Epicureanism is the character of Tito Melema in George Eliot's "Romola." Pleasure and the avoidance of pain are this young Greek's only principles. He is "of so easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of his father's corpse." "He has a lithe sleekness about him that seems marvellously fitted for slipping into any nest he fixes his mind on." "He had an unconquerable aversion to any thing unpleasant, even when an object very much loved and admired was on the other side of it." According to his thinking "any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that was needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of human selfishness turned outward; they were made by men who wanted others to sacrifice themselves for their sake." "He would rather that Baldassarre should not suffer; he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophy prove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more than for his own? To do so, he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and he did not love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, it made no valid claim; his father's life would have been dreary without him; are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasure they give themselves?" "He had simply chosen to make life easy to himself—to carry his human lot if possible in such a way that it should pinch him nowhere; but the choice had at various times landed him in unexpected positions." "Tito could not arrange life at all to his mind without a considerable sum of money, and that problem of arranging life to his mind had been the source of all his misdoing." "He would have been equal to any sacrifice that was not unpleasant." "Of other goods than pleasure he can form no conception." As Romola says in her reproaches: "You talk of substantial good, Tito! Are faithfulness, and love, and sweet grateful memories no good? Is it no good that we should keep our silent promises on which others build because they believe in our love and truth? Is it no good that a just life should be justly honoured? Or, is it good that we should harden our hearts against all the wants and hopes of those who have depended on us? What good can belong to men who have such souls? To talk cleverly, perhaps, and find soft couches for themselves, and live and die with their base selves as their best companions."

This pleasure-loving Tito Melema, "when he was only seven years old, Baldassarre had rescued from blows, had taken to a home that seemed like opened paradise, where there was sweet food and soothing caresses, all had on Baldassarre's knee; and from that time till the hour they had parted, Tito had been the one centre of Baldassarre's fatherly cares." Instead of finding and rescuing this man who, long years ago, had rescued Tito when a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel wrong, had reared him tenderly and been to him as a father, Tito sold the jewels which belonged to his father and would have been sufficient to ransom him from slavery, and finally, when found by Baldassarre in Florence, denied him and pronounced him a madman. He betrayed an innocent, trusting young girl into a mock marriage, at the same time ruining her and proving false to his lawful wife. He sold the library which it was Romola's father's dying wish to have kept in Florence as a distinct memorial to his life and work. He entered into selfish intrigues in the politics of the city, ready to betray his associates and friends whenever his own safety required it.

What wonder that Romola came to have "her new scorn of that thing called pleasure which made men base—that dexterous contrivance for selfish ease, that shrinking from endurance and strain, when others were bowing beneath burdens too heavy for them, which now made one image with her husband." In her own distress she learns from Savonarola that there is a higher law than individual pleasure. "She felt that the sanctity attached to all close relations, and therefore preëminently to the closest, was but the expression in outward law, of that result toward which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend; that the light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because they had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting of social and personal virtue. What else had Tito's crime toward Baldassarre been but that abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity and ingratitude? To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with Divine lightnings—lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false." The whole teaching of the book is summed up in the Epilogue. In the conversation between Romola and Tito's illegitimate son Lillo, Lillo says, "I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides—something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure."

"That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be great—he can hardly keep himself from wickedness—unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep to-morrow sacred; he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure, and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.'"

The trouble with Epicureanism is its assumption that the self is a bundle of natural appetites and passions, and that the end of life is their gratification. Experience shows, as in the case of Tito, that such a policy consistently pursued, brings not pleasure but pain—pain first of all to others, and then pain to the individual through their contempt, indignation, and vengeance. The truest pleasure must come through the development within one of generous emotions, kind sympathies, and large social interests. The man must be made over before the pleasures of the new man can be rightly sought and successfully found. This making over of man is no consistent part of the logical Epicurean programme, and consequently pure Epicureanism is sure to land one in the narrowness, selfishness, and heartlessness of a Tito Melema, and to bring upon one essentially the same condemnation and disaster.

Still, not in criticism or unkindness would we take leave of the serene and genial Epicurus. We may frankly recognise his fundamental limitations, and yet gratefully accept the good counsel he has to give. Parasite as it is,—a thing that can only live by sucking its life out of ideals and principles higher and hardier than itself, it is yet a graceful and ornamental parasite, which will beautify and shield the hard outlines of our more strenuous principles. There are dreary wastes in all our lives, into which we can profitably turn those streams of simple pleasure he commends. There are points of undue strain and tension where Epicurean prudence would bid us forego the slight fancied gain to save the ruinous expense to health and happiness. Let us fill up these gaps with hearty indulgence of healthy appetite, with vigorous exercise of dormant powers, with the eager joys of new-learned recreations. Let us tone down the strain and tension of our anxious, worried, worn, and weary lives by the rigid elimination of the superfluous, the strict concentration on the perpetual present, the resolute banishment from it of all past or future springs of depression and discouragement. Before we are through we shall see far nobler ideals than this; but we must not despise the day of small things. Though the lowest and least of them all, the Epicurean is one of the historical ideals of life. It has its claims which none of us may with impunity ignore. To serve him faithfully in the lower spheres of life is a wholesome preparation for the intelligent and reasonable service of Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian ideals which rule the higher realms. He who is false to the humble, homely demands of Epicurus can never be quite at his best in the grander service of Zeno and Plato, Aristotle and Jesus.

VI
THE CONFESSIONS OF AN EPICUREAN HERETIC

A heretic is a man who, while professing to hold the tenets of the sect to which he adheres, and sincerely believing that he is in substantial agreement with his more orthodox brethren, yet in his desire to be honest and reasonable, so modifies these tenets as to empty them of all that is distinctive of the sect in question, and thus unintentionally gives aid and comfort to its enemies. Every vigorous and vital school of thought soon or late develops this species of enfant terrible. Like the Christian church, the Epicurean school has been blessed with numerous progeny of this disturbing sort. The one among them all who most stoutly professes the fundamental principles of Epicureanism, and then proceeds to admit pretty much everything its opponents advance against it, is John Stuart Mill. His "Utilitarianism" is a fort manned with the most approved idealistic guns, yet with the Epicurean flag floating bravely over the whole. He "holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and all desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain." A more square and uncompromising statement of Epicureanism than this it would be impossible to make.

Having thus squarely identified himself with the Epicurean school, Mr. Mill proceeds to add to this doctrine in turn the doctrines of each one of the four schools which we are to consider later. First he introduces a distinction in the kind of pleasure, "assigning to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation." When asked what he means by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, although he tells us there is but one possible answer, he gives us two or three. First he appeals to the verdict of competent judges. "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account."

This appeal to competent judges, or, in other words, to authority, involves no philosophical principle at all unless we may call the doctrine of papal infallibility, to which this appeal of Mill is essentially akin, a principle. If these judges are competent, there must be a reason for the preference they give. In the next paragraph Mill tells us what that principle is; but in doing so introduces the principle of the subordination of lower to higher faculties, which we shall see later is the distinguishing principle of Plato. On this point Mill is as clear as Plato himself. "Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." This appeal to quality rather than quantity of pleasure puts Mill, in spite of himself, squarely on Platonic ground and abandons consistent Epicureanism. An illustration will make this clear. A man professes that money is his supreme end, the only thing he cares for in the world; he tells us that whatever he does is done for money, and whenever he refrains from doing anything it is to avoid losing money. So far he puts his conduct on a consistently mercenary basis. Suppose, however, that in the next sentence he tells us that he prizes certain kinds of money. If we ask him what is the basis of the distinction, he replies that he prizes money honestly earned and despises money dishonestly acquired. Should we not at once recognise, that in spite of his original declaration, he is not the consistently mercenary being he professed himself to be? The fact that he prefers honest to dishonest money shows that honesty, not money, is his real principle; and, in spite of his original profession, this distinction lifts him out of the class of mercenary money lovers into the class of men whose real principle is not money but honesty. Precisely so Mill's confession that he cares for the height and dignity of the faculties employed rather than the quantity of pleasure gained lifts him out of the Epicurean school to which he professes adherence and makes him an idealist.

When asked for an explanation of his preference of higher to lower, Mill at once shifts to Stoic ground in the following sentences: "We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it; but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their highest faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness—that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior—confounds the two very different ideas of happiness and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which we can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."

When pressed for a sanction of motive Mill appeals to the Aristotelian principle that the individual can only realise his conception of himself through union with his fellows in society: to the social nature of man and his inability to find himself in any smaller sphere, or through devotion to any lesser end. "This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation. The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of other people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection) living in a state of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with the fact of coöperating with others, and proposing to themselves a collective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for the time being) of their actions. So long as they are coöperating, their ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to. This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation goes on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so by removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures. It does not present itself to their minds as a superstition of education, or a law despotically imposed by the power of society, but as an attribute which it would not be well for them to be without."

Lastly Mill introduces the Christian ideal. "As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as one's self, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." In his attempt to prove the Christian obligation on an Epicurean basis the inconsistency between his Epicurean principle and his Christian preaching and practice becomes evident. Master of logic as Mill was, an author of a standard text-book on the subject, yet so desperate was the plight in which his attempt to stretch Epicureanism to Christian dimensions placed him, that he was compelled to resort to the following fallacy of composition, the fallaciousness of which every student of logic recognises at a glance. "Happiness is a good; each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons." As Carlyle has pointed out, this is equivalent to saying, since each pig wants all the swill in the trough for itself, a litter of pigs in the aggregate will desire each member of the litter to have its share of the whole,—a fallacy which a single experience in feeding pigs will sufficiently refute. It requires something deeper and higher than Epicurean principles to lift men to a plane where Christian altruism is the natural and inevitable conduct which Mill rightly says it ought to be.

These confessions of an Epicurean heretic, wrung from a man who had been rigidly trained by a stern father in Epicurean principles, yet whose surpassing candour compelled him to make these admissions, so fatal to the system, so ennobling to the man and to the doctrine he proclaimed, serve as an admirable preparation for the succeeding chapters, where these same principles, which Mill introduces as supplements, and modifications, and amendments to Epicureanism, will be presented as the foundation-stones of larger and deeper views of life. Mill starts with a jack-knife which he publicly proclaims to be in every part of the handle and in every blade through and through Epicurean; then gets a new handle from the Stoics; borrows one blade from Plato, and another from Aristotle; unconsciously steals the biggest blade of all from Christianity; makes one of the best knives to be found on the moral market: yet still, in loyalty to early parental training, insists on calling the finished product by the same name as that with which he started out. The result is a splendid knife to cut with; but a difficult one to classify. Our quest for the principles of personality will not bring us anything much better, for practical purposes, than the lofty teaching of Mill's "Utilitarianism," and its companion in inconsistency, Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Ethics." All our five principles are present in these so-called hedonistic treatises. But it is a great theoretical advantage, and ultimately carries with it considerable practical gain, to give credit where credit is due, and to call things by their right names. Thanks to the candour of these heretics, though the names we encounter hereafter will be new, we shall greet most of the principles we discover under these new names as old friends to whom the Epicurean heretics gave us our first introduction.

CHAPTER II

Translated into simple everyday terms, this doctrine in its application to the personal life means that the value of any external fact or possession or experience depends on the way in which we take it. Take riches, for example. Stocks and bonds, real estate and mortgages, money and bank accounts, in themselves do not make a man either rich or poor. They may enrich or they may impoverish his personality. It is not until they are taken up into the mind, thought over, related to one's general scheme of conduct, made the basis of one's purposes and plans, that they become a factor in the personal life. Obviously the same amount of money, a hundred thousand dollars, may be worked over into personal life in a great variety of ways. One man is made proud by it. Another is made lazy. Another is made hard-hearted. Another is made avaricious for more. Another is fired with the desire to speculate. Another is filled with anxiety lest he may lose it. All these are obviously impoverished by the so-called wealth which they possess. To rich men's wives and children, whose wealth comes without the strenuous exertion and close human contact involved in earning it, it generally works their personal impoverishment in one or more of these fatal ways. For wealth, in an indolent, self-indulgent, vain, conceited, ostentatious, unsympathetic mind, takes on the colour of these odious qualities, and becomes a curse to its possessor; just because he or she is cursed with these evil propensities already, and the wealth simply adds fuel to the preëxistent, though perhaps latent and smouldering flames.

On the other hand one man is made grateful for the wealth he has been able to accumulate. Another is made more sympathetic. Another is made generous. Another is urged into the larger public service his independent means makes possible. Another is lifted up into a sense of responsibility for its right use. On the whole the men and women who earn their money honestly are usually affected in one or more of these beneficial ways, and their wealth becomes an enrichment of their personality.

Now it is impossible that this hundred thousand dollars should get into any man's mind, and become a mental state, without its being mixed with one or other of these mental, emotional, and volitional accompaniments. The mental state, in other words, is a compound, of which the external fact, in this case the hundred thousand dollars, is the least important ingredient. It is so unimportant a factor that the Stoics pronounced it indifferent. The tone and temper in which we accept our riches, the ends to which we devote them, the spirit in which we hold them, the way in which we spend them, are so vastly more important than the mere fact of having them, that by comparison, the fact itself seems indifferent. Like all strong statements, this is doubtless an exaggeration. You cannot have just the same mental state without riches that you can have with them. The external fact is a factor, though a relatively small one, in the composite mental state. The virtues of a rich man are not precisely the same as the virtues of a poor man. Yet the Stoic paradox is very much nearer the truth than the statement of the average man, that external things are the whole, or even the most important part of our mental states.

The same thing is true of health and sickness. Health often makes one careless, insensitive, negligent of duty; while sickness often makes one conscientious, considerate, faithful, and thus more useful and efficient than his healthy brother. Popularity often puffs up with pride; while persecution, by humbling, prepares the heart for truer blessedness. Hence whether an external fact is good or evil, depends on how we take it, what we make of it, the state of mind and heart and will into which it enters as a factor; and that in turn depends, the Stoic tells us, on ourselves, and is under our control Stoicism is fundamentally this psychological doctrine of apperception, carried over and applied in the field of the personal life,—the doctrine, namely, that no external thing alone can affect us for good or evil, until we have woven it into the texture of our mental life, painted it with the colour of our dominant mood and temper, and stamped it with the approval of our will. Thus everything except a slight residuum is through and through mental, our own product, the expression of what we are and desire to be. The only difference between Stoicism and Christian Science at this point is that Stoicism recognises the material element; though it does so only to minimise it, and pronounce it indifferent. Christian Science denies that there is any physical fact, or even the raw material out of which to make one. All is merely mental, says the consistent Christian Scientist with the toothache. There is no matter there to ache. The Stoic, truer to the facts, and in not less but more heroic spirit declares: "There is matter, but it doesn't matter if there is." The toothache can be taken as a spur to greater fortitude and equanimity than the man whose teeth are all sound has had opportunity to practically exemplify; and so the total mental state, toothache-borne-with-fortitude, may be positively good.

This doctrine that external things never in themselves constitute a mental state; that they are consequently indifferent; that the all-important contribution is made by the mind itself; that this contribution from the mind is what gives the tone and determines the worth of the total mental state; and that this contribution is exclusively our own affair and may be brought entirely under our own control;—this is the first and most fundamental Stoic principle. If we have grasped this principle, we are prepared to read intelligently and sympathetically the otherwise startling and paradoxical deliverances of the Stoic masters.

II
SELECTIONS FROM THE STOIC SCRIPTURES

First let us listen to Epictetus, the slave, the Stoic of the cottage as he has been called:—

"Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold on the affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be borne; but rather by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you, and thus you will lay hold on it as it is to be borne." Here the handle is a homely but effective figure for the mass of mental association into which the external fact of a brother who acts unjustly is introduced before he actually enters our mental state, and determines how we shall feel and act.

"If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?" The reviling does not become a determining factor in my own mental state unless I choose to let it. If I feel humiliated and stung by it, it is because I am weak and foolish enough to stake my estimate of myself, and my consequent happiness, upon what somebody who does not know me says about me, rather than on what I, who know myself better than anybody else, actually think. A boy at Phillips Andover Academy once drew this distinction very adroitly for another boy. There had been a free fight among the boys causing a great deal of disturbance, and Principal Bancroft had traced the beginning of it to an insulting remark on the part of the boy in question. Dr. Bancroft accused him of beginning the trouble. "No, sir," said the boy, "I did not begin it. The other fellow began it." "Well," said Principal Bancroft, "you tell me precisely what took place, and I will decide who began it." "Oh," replied the boy, "I simply called him a 'darned' fool, and he took offence." Now if the other boy had been a Stoic, he would not have taken offence, and the first boy might have called him a fool with impunity. Imputing Stoicism to that extent to other people, however, is very dangerous business. Stoicism is a doctrine to be strictly applied to ourselves, but never imputed to other people, least of all to the people we wish to abuse and revile.

Epictetus again states his doctrine most explicitly on the subject of terrors. "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our views."

Again he makes a sharp distinction between what is in our power,—that is, what we think about things; and what are not in our power,—that is external facts. "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs."

"Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent, and seek for your own that which is really controlled by others, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which is your own, and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm."

All this is simply carrying out the principle that we need not concern ourselves about purely external things, for those things pure and simple can never get into our minds, or affect us one way or the other. The only things that enter into us are things as we think about them, facts as we feel about them, forces as we react upon them, and these thoughts, feelings, and reactions are our own affairs; and if we do not think serenely, feel tranquilly, and act freely with reference to them, it is not the fault of external things, but of ourselves.

In his discourse on tranquillity Epictetus gives us the same counsel. "Consider, you who are about to undergo trial, what you wish to preserve, and in what to succeed. For if you wish to preserve a mind in harmony with nature, you are entirely safe; everything goes well; you have no trouble on your hands. While you wish to preserve that freedom which belongs to you, and are contented with that, for what have you longer to be anxious? For who is the master of things like these? Who can take them away? If you wish to be a man of modesty and fidelity, who shall prevent you? If you wish not to be restrained or compelled, who shall compel you to desires contrary to your principles? to aversions contrary to your opinion? The judge, perhaps, will pass a sentence against you which he thinks formidable; but can he likewise make you receive it with shrinking? Since, then, desire and aversion are in your power, for what have you to be anxious?"

Epictetus bids us meet difficulties in the same way. "Difficulties are things that show what men are. For the future, in case of any difficulty, remember that God, like a gymnastic trainer, has pitted you against a rough antagonist. For what end? That you may be an Olympic conqueror; and this cannot be without toil. No man, in my opinion, has a more profitable difficulty on his hands than you have, provided you but use it as an athletic champion uses his antagonist."

Epictetus does not shrink from the logic of his teaching in its application to the sorrows of others, though here it is tempered by a concession to the weakness of ordinary mortals. "When you see a person weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead, or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things. But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care that you do not lament internally also." At this point, if not before, we feel that Stoicism is doing violence to the nobler feelings of our nature, and are prepared to break with it. Stoicism is too hard and cold and individualistic to teach us our duty, or even to leave us free to act out our best inclinations, toward our neighbour. We may be as Stoical as we please in our own troubles and afflictions; but let us beware how we carry over its icy distinctions into our interpretation of our neighbour's suffering.

I have drawn most of my illustrations from Epictetus, because this resignation comes with rather better grace from a poor, lame man, who has been a slave, and who lives on the barest necessities of life, than from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the wealthy courtier Seneca. Yet the most distinctive utterances of these men teach the same lesson. Seneca attributes it to his pilot in the famous prayer, "Oh, Neptune, you may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but whatever happens, I shall keep my rudder true." Marcus Aurelius says: "Let the part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or pain; and let it not unite itself with them, but let it circumscribe itself, and limit those effects to their parts." "Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty, and whether dying or doing something else. For it is one of the acts of life,—this act by which we die; it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in hand." "External things touch not the soul, not in the least degree." "Remember on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this principle: that this is not a misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good fortune."

The most recent prophet of Stoicism is Maurice Maeterlinck. In "Wisdom and Destiny," he says:—

"The event itself is pure water that flows from the pitcher of fate, and seldom has it either savour or perfume or colour. But even as the soul may be wherein it seeks shelter, so will the event become joyous or sad, become tender or hateful, become deadly or quick with life. To those round about us there happen incessant and countless adventures, whereof every one, it would seem, contains a germ of heroism; but the adventure passes away, and heroic deed there is none. But when Jesus Christ met the Samaritan, met a few children, an adulterous woman, then did humanity rise three times in succession to the level of God."

"It might almost be said that there happens to men only that they desire. It is true that on certain external events our influence is of the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events shall become in ourselves—in other words, on their spiritual part. The life of most men will be saddened or lightened by the thing that may chance to befall them,—in the men whom I speak of, whatever may happen is lit up by their inward life. If you have been deceived, it is not the deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it gave birth in your soul, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this forgiveness,—by these shall your eyes see more clearly than if all men had ever been faithful. But if, by this act of deceit, there have come not more simpleness, loftier faith, wider range to your love, then have you been deceived in vain, and may truly say nothing has happened."

"Let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts; and deeds of heroism are but offered to those who, for many long years, have been heroes in obscurity and silence. And whether you climb up the mountain or go down the hill to the valley, whether you journey to the end of the world or merely walk round your house, none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate. If Judas go forth to-night, it is toward Judas his steps will tend, nor will chance for betrayal be lacking; but let Socrates open his door,—he shall find Socrates asleep on the threshold before him, and there will be occasion for wisdom. We become that which we discover in the sorrows and joys that befall us; and the least expected caprices of fate soon mould themselves to our thought. It is in our past that Destiny finds all her weapons, her vestments, her jewels. A sorrow your soul has changed into sweetness, to indulgence or patient smiles, is a sorrow that shall never return without spiritual ornament; and a fault or defect you have looked in the face can harm you no more. All that has thus been transformed can belong no more to the hostile powers. Real fatality exists only in certain external disasters—as disease, accident, the sudden death of those we love; but inner fatality there is none. Wisdom has will power sufficient to rectify all that does not deal death to the body; it will even at times invade the narrow domain of external fatality. Even when the deed has been done, the misfortune has happened, it still rests with ourselves to deny her the least influence on that which shall come to pass in our soul. She may strike at the heart that is eager for good, but still is she helpless to keep back the light that shall stream to this heart from the error acknowledged, the pain undergone. It is not in her power to prevent the soul from transforming each single affliction into thoughts, into feelings, and treasure she dare not profane. Be her empire never so great over all things external, she always must halt when she finds on the threshold a silent guardian of the inner life. For even as triumph of dictators and consuls could be celebrated only in Rome, so can the true triumph of Fate take place nowhere save in our soul."

It would be easy to cite passage after passage in which the great masters of Stoicism ring the changes on this idea, that the external thing, whether it be good or evil, cannot get into the fortified citadel of my mind, and therefore cannot touch me. Before it can touch me it must first be incorporated into my mind. In the very act of incorporation it undergoes a transformation, which in the perverse man may change the best external things into poison and bitterness; and in the sage is able to convert the worst of external facts into virtue, glory, and honour. Out of indifferent external matter, thinking makes the world in which we live; and if it is not a good world, the fault is, not with the indifferent external matters,—such as, to take Epictetus's enumeration of them, "wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain, which lie between the virtues and the vices,"—but in our weak and erroneous thinking.

III
THE STOIC REVERENCE FOR UNIVERSAL LAW

The first half of the Stoic doctrine is that we give our world the colour of our thoughts. The second half of Stoicism is concerned with what these thoughts of ours shall be. The first half of the doctrine alone would leave us in crude fantastic Cynicism,—the doctrine out of which the broader and deeper Stoic teaching took its rise. The Cynic paints the world in the flaring colours of his undisciplined, individual caprice. Modern apostles of the essential Stoic principle incline to paint the world in the roseate hues of a merely optional optimism. They want to be well, and happy, and serene, and self-satisfied; they think they are; and thinking makes them so. If Stoicism had been as superficial as that, as capricious, and temperamental, and individualistic, it would not have lasted as it has for more than two thousand years. The Stoic thought had substance, content, objective reality, as unfortunately most of the current phases of popular philosophy have not. This objective and universal principle the Stoic found in law. We must think things, not as we would like to have them, which is the optimism of the fabled ostrich, with its head in the sand; not in some vague, general phrases which mean nothing, which is the optimism of mysticism: but in the hard, rigid terms of universal law. Everything that happens is part of the one great whole. The law of the whole determines the nature and worth of the part. Seen from the point of view of the whole, every part is necessary, and therefore good,—everything except, as Cleanthes says in his hymn, "what the wicked do in their foolishness." The typical evils of life can all be brought under the Stoic formula, under some beneficial law; all, that is, except sin. That particular form of evil was not satisfactorily dealt with until the advent of Christianity.

Take evils of accident to begin with. An aged man slips on the ice, falls, breaks a bone, and is left, like Epictetus, lame for life. The particular application of the law of gravitation in this case has unfortunate results for the individual. But the law is good. We should not know how to get along in the world without this beneficent law. Shall we repine and complain against the law that holds the stars and planets in their courses, shapes the mountains, sways the tides, brings down the rain, and draws the rivers to the sea, turning ten thousand mill-wheels of industry as it goes rejoicing on its way; shall we complain against this law because in one instance in a thousand million it chances to throw down an individual, which happens to be me, and breaks a bone or two of mine, and leaves me for the brief span of my remaining pilgrimage with a limping gait? If Epictetus could say to his cruel master under torture, "You will break my leg if you keep on," and then when it broke could smilingly add, "I told you so,"—cannot we endure with fortitude, and even grateful joy, the incidental inflictions which so beneficent a master as the great law of gravitation in its magnificent impartiality may see fit to mete out to us?

A current of electricity, seeking its way from sky to earth, finds on some particular occasion the body of a beloved husband, a dear son, an honoured father of dependent children, the best conductor between the air and the earth, and kills the person through whose body it takes its swift and fatal course. Yet this law has no malevolence in its impartial heart. On the contrary the beneficent potency of the laws of electricity is so great that our largest hopes for the improvement of our economic condition rest on its unexplored resources.

A group of bacteria, ever alert to find matter not already appropriated and held in place by vital forces stronger than their own, find their food and breeding place within a human body, and subject our friend or our child to weeks of fever, and perchance to death. Yet we cannot call evil the great biological law that each organism shall seek its meat from God wherever it can find it. Indeed were it not for these micro-organisms, and their alertness to seize upon and transform into their own living substance everything morbid and unwholesome, the whole earth would be nothing but a vast charnel house reeking with the intolerable stench of the undisintegrated and unburied dead.

The most uncompromising exponent of this second half of the Stoic doctrine in the modern world is Immanuel Kant. According to him the whole worth and dignity of life turns not on external fortune, nor even on good natural endowments, but on our internal reaction, the reverence of our will for universal law. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a Good Will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches, honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one's condition which is called happiness, inspire pride and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind."

"Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is, according to principles; i.e. have a will."

"Consequently the only good action is that which is done out of pure reverence for universal law. This categorical imperative of duty is expressed as follows: 'Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a Universal Law of Nature.' And since every other rational being must conduct himself on the same rational principle that holds for me, I am bound to respect him as I do myself. Hence the second practical imperative is: 'So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end, never as means only.'"

In Kant Stoicism reaches its climax. Law and the will are everything: possessions, even graces are nothing.

IV
THE STOIC SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

The problem of evil was the great problem of the Stoic, as the problem of pleasure was the problem of the Epicurean. To this problem the Stoic gives substantially four answers, with all of which we are already somewhat familiar:—

First: Only that is evil which we choose to regard as such. To quote Marcus Aurelius once more on this fundamental point: "Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay." "Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint: I have been harmed. Take away the complaint: I have been harmed, and the harm is done away."

Second: Since virtue or integrity is the only good, nothing but the loss of that can be a real evil. When this is present, nothing of real value can be lacking. A Stoic then says, "Virtue suffers no vacancy in the place she inhabits; she fills the whole soul, takes away the sensibility of any loss, and is herself sufficient." "As the stars hide their diminished heads before the brightness of the sun, so pains, afflictions, and injuries are all crushed and dissipated by the greatness of virtue; whenever she shines, everything but what borrows its splendour from her disappears, and all manner of annoyances have no more effect upon her than a shower of rain upon the sea." "It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it." "Where a man can live at all, he can live well." "I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must go into exile. Does any man hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?" "Life itself is neither good nor evil, but only a place for good and evil." "It is the edge and temper of the blade that make a good sword, not the richness of the scabbard; and so it is not money and possessions that make a man considerable, but his virtue." "They are amusing fellows who are proud of things which are not in our power. A man says: I am better than you for I possess much land, and you are wasting with hunger. Another says: I am of consular rank; another: I have curly hair. But a horse does not say to a horse: I am superior to you, for I possess much fodder and much barley, and my bits are of gold, and my harness is embroidered; but he says: I am swifter than you. And every animal is better or worse from his own merit or his own badness. Is there then no virtue in man only, and must we look to our hair, and our clothes, and to our ancestors?" "Let our riches consist in coveting nothing, and our peace in fearing nothing."

Third: What seems evil to the individual is good for the whole: and since we are members of the whole is good for us. "Must my leg be lamed?" the Stoic asks. "Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg find fault with the world? Wilt thou not willingly surrender it for the whole? Know you not how small a part you are compared with the whole?"