1 See Vol. I., pp. 78-83.

2 Aristotle, Metaph., VIII., iii., 1043, b, 25.

3 Zeller, Phil. d. Gr., II., a, 277.

4 Diog. L., VI., 3.

5 According to the very probable conjecture of Zeller, l. c.

6 Zeller, l. c.; Diog. L., VI., 12.

7 Diog., VI., 3.

8 For the authorities, see Zeller, op. cit., p. 263.

9 Diog., IX., 62.

10 Metaph., IV., iv., 1008, b, 12 ff.

11 Diss., III., xxii.

12 Diog., VIII., i. ff.

13 Diog., VI., 96.

14 Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, 29.

15 Diog., VII., 5.

16 Diog., VII., 183.

17 Ibid., 179.

18 Ibid., 25.

19 Ibid., 180 L.

20 Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., iii., 2.

21 It is significant that the only Stoic who fell back on pure Cynicism should have been Aristo of Chios, a genuine Greek, while the only one who, like Aristotle, identified good with knowledge was Herillus, a Carthaginian.

22 Op. cit., p. 18, cf. p. 362.

23 Diog., VII., 144 ff.

24 Posidonius estimated the sun’s distance from the earth at 500,000,000 stades, and the moon’s distance at 2,000,000 stades, which, counting the stade at 200 yards, gives about 57,000,000 and 227,000 miles respectively. The sun’s diameter he reckoned, according to one account, at 440,000 miles, about half the real amount; according to another account at a quarter less. Zeller, op. cit., p. 190, Note 2.

25 For the authorities, see Zeller, op. cit., p. 139, Note 1.

26 Zeller, p. 155.

27 The Stoic necessarianism gave occasion to a repartee which has remained classical ever since, although its original authorship is known to few. A slave of Zeno’s, on receiving chastisement for a theft, tried to excuse himself by quoting his master’s principle that he was fated to steal. ‘And to be flogged for it,’ replied the philosopher, calmly continuing his predestined task. (Diog., VII., 23.)

28 Soph., 247, D.

29 Plutarch, De Comm. Notit., xxx., 2; Cicero, Acad., I., xi., 39; Diog., VII., 150; Zeller, p. 117.

30 Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., xliii., 4.

31 Zeller, p. 201, ff.

32 Cicero, De Nat. Deor., II., xv., 39.

33 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., IX., 18.

34 Cicero, De Nat. Deor., I., xiii., 32.

35 Zeller, p. 309 ff.

36 See Cicero, De Divinatione, I., passim.

37 Plutarch, De Placit. Phil., IV., xi.

38 This seems the best explanation of the various statements on the subject made by our authorities, for which see Zeller, pp. 71-86.

39 Sextus Emp., Adv. Math., VIII., 375.

40 Zeller, p. 109.

41 Zeller, p. 93.

42 Stobaeus, Eclog., II., p. 132, quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 394; Diog., VII., 89.

43 ‘Quid est sapientia? Semper idem velle atque idem nolle. Licet illam exceptiunculam non adicias ut rectum sit quod velis. Non potest cuiquam semper idem placere nisi rectum.’ Seneca, Epist., xx., 4.

44 Cicero, De Fin., I., ix., 30. In this he followed the Cyrenaics; see Diog., II., 87.

45 Sextus Emp., Adv. Math., XI., 73.

46 ‘Das platonische Gedicht vom himmlischen Gottesstaat hatte durch diestoische Auffassung der Welt als eines vom Göttlichen durchdrungenen und beseelten Körpers einen Leib bekommen, in dessen zwingenden Organismus der Einzelne als Glied beschlossen ist und sich fügen muss.’ Bruno Bauer, Christus u. d. Cäsaren, p. 328.

47 Zeller, p. 168, Note 2.

48 Diog., VII., vii., 85.

49 Gellius, Noct. Att., XII., v., 7, quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 395.

50 Dissert., I., xix., II.

51 Ibid., xxii., 9, ff.

52 Cicero, Tusc. Disput., IV., xix. ff.

53 Cic., Tusc. Disput., IV., vi.

54 Zeller, p. 229.

55 See the Dissertations of Epictêtus throughout.

56 Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis, cap. xxxiii., p. 1076 B.

57 Cf. Zeller, p. 583.

58 Zeller, pp. 260-1.

59 Ibid., pp. 267-8.

60 Ibid., p. 270.

61 Cicero, De Fin., III., xvii., 58; Acad., I., x., 37; De Off., I., iii., 8.

62 De Off., I., vi.

63 I., viii.

64 I., xviii-xxiii.

65 Pyrrh. Hyp., III., 201.

66 Cic., De Off., III., xxiii., 91.

67 Cic., De Off., III., xii., 51.

68 Ibid., xxiii., 89.

69 Plutarch, De Comm. Notit., xi., 8.

70 Cf. Zeller, pp. 263-4, 278-84.

71 Diog., VII., 130; Cic., De Fin., III., xviii., 60; Zeller, pp. 305-9.

72 Diog., VII., 31, 176.

73 Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., xviii., 5.

74 ‘Omnia scelera, etiam ante effectum operis, quantum culpae satis est, perfecta sunt.’—Seneca, De Const. Sap., vii., 4. Cf. Zeno apud Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., XI., 190.

75 ‘Prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus est ... sacer intra nos spiritus sedet bonorum malorumque nostrorum observator et custos.’—Seneca, Epp., xli., 1. Cf. Horace, Epp., I., i., 61; Lucan, IX., 573; Persius, III., 43; Juvenal, XIII., 192-235.

76 It may be desirable to give some reasons in support of this opinion, as the contrary has been stated by scholars writing within a comparatively recent period. Thus Welcker says: ‘Das Gewissen ward bei den Griechen als ein göttliches Wesen, Erinys, gescheut und wie wir es sonst nicht finden, zur Gottheit erhoben’ (Griechische Götterlehre, I., 233); and again (p. 699) ‘Ἐρινύς ... ist das Gewissen.’ Similarly, M. Alfred Maury observes that, ‘les remords se personnifiaient sous la forme de déesses Erinnyies, chargées de punir tous les forfaits’ (Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, I., 342). And Preller, while entertaining sounder views respecting their origin, contents himself with the caution that, ‘Man sich hüten muss die Furien blos fur die subjectiven Mächte des menschlichen Gewissen zu halten’ (Griechische Mythologie, I., 686, 3rd ed.). Now, in the first place, the Erinyes did not punish all crime, as they ought to have done had they represented conscience. According to Aeschylus (Eumen., 604-5), they considered that the murder of her husband by Clytaemnestra was no affair of theirs, there being no blood relationship between the parties concerned. They did not persecute Electra, who, short of striking the fatal blow, had as much hand in her mother’s death as Orestes. And even when a father was killed by his son, they do not always seem to have taken up the matter; for in the Odyssey it is not by the Erinyes of Laius, but by those of Epicastê that Oedipus is pursued—a conception very unlike that of Sophocles, who makes him feel as much remorse for the parricide as for the incest and its consequences. In the next place, the Erinyes are let loose not by the action itself but by the curses of the injured or offended blood-relation, as we see by Homer, Il., IX., 454 and 566; which seems to show that if they personified anything human it was the imprecations of the victim, not the self-reproach of the aggressor. Thirdly, the Orestes of Aeschylus, so far from feeling conscience-smitten, disclaims all responsibility for his mother’s death, inflicted as it was in consequence of a direct command from the higher gods, accompanied by threats of heavy punishment in case of disobedience. (Eumen., 443 ff.). And, finally, the office assigned to the Erinyes of seeing that the laws of nature are not broken (vol. I., 67) shows that the Greeks conceived their existence as something altogether objective and physical. [There is a short but very sensible account of the Erinyes in Keightley’s Mythology, p. 175, 4th ed.]

77 Cicero, De Off., I., xxxi.; Epictêtus, Man., 17, b., 30; Diss., I., ii., 33; xvi., 20; xxix., 39; II., v., 10; ib., 21; x., 4, xiv., 8; xxiii., 38; xxv., 22; Antoninus, Comm., VI., 39, 43; IX., 29; cf. Seneca, Epp., lxxxv., 34, and the saying of Marcus Aurelius quoted by Dion Cassius (Epit., LXXI., xxxiv., 4), that we cannot make men what we wish them to be; we can only turn what faculties they have to the best account in working for the public good.

78 For the references to these and other similar passages, see the last note.

79 Plutarch, De Alex. Virt., I., vi.; Diog., VII., 33.

80 It need hardly be observed that here also the morality of natural law has attained its highest artistic development under the hand of George Eliot—sometimes even to the neglect of purely artistic effect, as in Daniel Deronda and the Spanish Gypsy.

81 Zeller, p. 297, followed by Mr. Capes, in his excellent little work on Stoicism (p. 51).

82 Seneca, De Irâ, I., v., 2 ff.; II., xxxi., 7; De Clem., I., iii., 2; De Benef., IV., xxvi., I, Epp., xcv., 51 ff.; Epictêtus, Diss., IV., v., 10; Antoninus, VII., 13; together with the additional references given by Zeller, p. 286 ff. It is to be observed that the mutual love attributed to human beings by the Stoic philosophers stands, not for an empirical characteristic, but for an unrealised idea of human nature. The actual feelings of men towards one another are described by Seneca in language recalling that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi. ‘Erras,’ he exclaims, ‘si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis: hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum: nisi quod illarum perniciosior est primus incursus. Nunquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas inicit: aut fame aut timore coguntur ad pugnam: homini perdere hominem libet.’—Epp., ciii., 2.

83 Plato, Protagoras, 337, D.

84 ‘He [Charles Austin] presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to any one’s preconceived feelings.’—Mill’s Autobiography, p. 78.

85 Zeller, p. 281.

86 ‘Homo sacra res homini jam per lusum et jocum occiditur ... satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.’—Seneca, Epp., xcv., 33. ‘Servi sunt? Immo homines. Servi sunt? Immo contubernales. Servi sunt? Immo humiles amici. Servi sunt? Immo conservi.’—Ibid., xlvii., 1. Compare the treatise De Irâ, passim.

87 Seneca once lets falls the words, ‘fortuna aequo jure genitos alium alii donavit.’—Consol. ad Marciam, xx, 2; but this is the only expression of the kind that we have been able to discover in a Stoic writer of the empire.

88 Seneca, Epp., lxxx.

89 ‘L’empereur avait pour principe de maintenir les anciennes maximes romaines dans leur intégrité.’ (Renan’s Marc-Aurèle, p. 54.) The authority given by M. Renan is Dion Cass., LXXI., xxxiv.; where, however, there is nothing of the kind stated. Capitolinus says (Anton. Phil., cap. xi.): ‘Jus autem magis vetus restituit quam novum fecit.’

90 Renan, p. 30; Capitolinus, Anton. Phil., xii.; Dion Cass., Epit., LXXI., xxix., 3.

91 Antoninus, Comm., VI., 46; X., 8.

92 The expressions used by M. Ernest Renan when treating of this subject are somewhat conflicting. In reference to the penal enactments against Christianity under Marcus Aurelius, he first states that, however objectionable they may have been, ‘en tout cas dans l’application la mansuétude du bon empereur fut à l’abri de tout reproche’ (Marc-Aurèle, p. 58.) Further on, however we are told that when the martyrs of Lyons appealed to Rome, ‘la réponse impériale arriva en fin. Elle était dure et cruelle.’ (p. 329.) And subsequently M. Renan makes the Emperor personally responsible for the atrocities practised on that occasion by observing, ‘Si Marc-Aurèle, au lieu d’employer les lions et la chaise rougie,’ &c. (p. 345.) But perhaps such inconsistencies are to be expected in a writer who has elevated the necessity of perpetual self-contradiction into a principle.

93 Epictêtus, Diss., III., xxiv.

94 Seneca, De Irâ, I., xiv., 2; De Clement., I., vi., 2.

95 Diog., VII., 91. Ziegler (Gesch. d. Ethik, Bonn, 1882, I., 174) holds, in opposition to Zeller, that originally every Stoic, as such, was assumed to be a perfect sage, and that the question was only whether the ideal had ever been realised outside the school. This, however, goes against the evidence of Plutarch, who tells as (De Stoic. Repug., xxxi., 5) that Chrysippus neither professed to be good himself nor supposed that any of his friends or teachers or disciples was good.

96 Seneca, Epp., cxvi., 4. It must be borne in mind that Panaetius was speaking at a time when the object of passion would at best be either another man’s wife or a member of the demi-monde.

97 Comm., VII., 26; XII., 16.

98 See especially Antoninus, Comm., IX., 1.

99 Friedländer, Römische Sittengeschichte, I., 463; Duruy, Histoire des Romains, V., 349 ff., 370; cf. Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine, II., 152 ff., 212 ff.

100 This idea is most distinctly expressed by Marcus Aurelius, II., 1, and VII., 13.

101 For the authorities, see Zeller, p. 176.

102 See especially Seneca, Epp., lxiv., and the whole treatise De Providentiâ.

103 See, inter alia, Comm., IV., 3; VI., 15, 37; VII., 21, 49; XI., 1; XII., 7, 21, 23, 24, 26, 31, 32.

104 Comm., XI., 28, xii. 14. A modern disciple of Aurelius has expressed himself to the same purpose in slightly different language:—

105 First Principles, § 177.

106 See an article entitled ‘Pantheism and Cosmic Emotion,’ by Frederic Harrison, in the Nineteenth Century for August, 1881.

107 From the Hymn of Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Francis Newman in The Soul, p. 73, fifth edition.

108 Epicureanism, p. 1.

109 Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 380.

110 Op. cit., p. 72.

111 Short Studies, III., p. 246.

112 Gesch. des Mater., I., p. 92.

113 Pollock’s Spinoza, p. 64.

114 Epicuro e l’Epicurismo, Florence, 1877, p. 29.

115 Lucretii Philosophia cum fontibus comparata, Groningen, 1877, p. 137.

116 Dialogues Philosophiques, p. 54, quoted by Woltjer, loc. cit.

117 Diog. L., X., 142.

118 Ibid., 113.

119 Diog. L., X., 134.

120 Cicero, Acad., II., xxxiii., 106.

121 Cicero, De Fin., II., xxx., 96; Diog., X., 22. Cicero translates the words διαλογισμῶν μνήμῃ, ‘memoria rationum inventorumque nostrorum.’ They may refer merely to the pleasure derived from intellectual conversation.

122 The authorities for the life of Epicurus are given by Zeller, op. cit., p. 363 ff.

123 Diog., II., 92.

124 Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., II., a, 294.

125 Cf. Plato, Protag., 353, C, ff., with Epicurus in the letter to Menoeceus, quoted by Diog., X., 129.

126 Morale d’Épicure, p. 20.

127 Wallace’s Épicureanism, p. 154; Guyau, Morale d’Épicure, p. 34.

128 Cicero, Tusc. Disput., III., xviii., 41; Zeller, III., a, p. 444.

129 Zeller, p. 460.

130 Ibid., p. 581.

131 Diog., II., 72.

132 Diog., X., 131.

133 Guyau, Morale d’Épicure, p. 55.

134 Diog., X., 118.

135 Lucret., IV., 1057-66.

136 Diog., X., 117, 118.

137 Cicero, De Fin., V., xxvii., 80; Diog., X., 118.

138 That is, if we assume what Aristotle says on the subject to be derived from common usage (Eth. Nic., III., ix., p. 1115, a, 33).

139 Cicero, Tusc. Disp., II., xii., 28.

140 Cicero, De Fin., I., xv.; Tusc., V., xxviii.

141 Diog., X., 150 ff.

142 Wallace, p. 162; Diog., X., 150.

143 Epicureanism, pp. 162-3.

144 Cicero, De Fin., II., vii., 20; De Nat. Deor., I., xvii., 45, xxx., 85.

145 Diog., X., 150-1.

146 V., 1145-59.

147 Cicero, De Fin., II., xvii., 57.

148 Op. cit., p. 163.

149 The lamented Prof. T. H. Green may be mentioned as another example of a high-minded thinker who was also an ardent and active politician. With regard to antiquity, see the splendid roll of public-spirited philosophers enumerated by Plutarch, Adv. Col., xxxii.

150 Op. cit., p. 164.

151 J. S. Mill observed, in a conversation with Mr. John Morley, reported by the latter, that ‘in his youth mere negation of religion was a firm bond of union, social and otherwise, between men who agreed in nothing else.’—Fortnightly Review, vol. XIII., p. 675.

152 Cicero, De Nat. Deor., L., 18-24.

153 Woltjer, Lucret. Ph., p. 74.

154 ‘Das Staatsgesetz oder das dem Gesetz gleichkommende väterliche Herkommen bildet einen Gegensatz gegen ein abgeschlossenes Priesterthum und dessen natürlichen Einfluss.’ Welcker, Gr. Götterlehre, II., p. 45. ‘La religion romaine, comme toutes celles où domine l’esprit laïque, diminue le rôle du prêtre.’ Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine, I., p. 16.