1 Nor yet did the Stoics go so far in their recognition of the universal rights of mankind as to disapprove of slavery. In fact, the less value they attached to external circumstances, the less they cared to run counter to the social institutions and arrangements of their age. But still they could not suppress a confession that slavery is unjust,2 nor cease to aim at mitigating the evil both in theory and practice. If all men are, as rational beings, equal, all men together form one community. Reason is the common law for all, and those who owe allegiance to one law are members of one state.1 If the Stoics, therefore, compared the world, in its more extended sense, to a society, because of the the body belongs to his lord; his heart belongs to himself. The duties of the slave have limits, and over against them stand certain definite rights. He enumerates many instances of self-sacrifice and magnanimity in slaves, and concludes by saying: Eadem omnibus principia eademque origo, nemo altero nobilior, nisi cui rectius ingenium. . .. unus omnium parens mundus est neminem despexeris . . . sive libertini ante vos habentur sive servi sive exterarum homines. erigite audacter animos, et quicquid in medio sordidi est transilite: expectat vos in summo magna nobilitas, &c. So Ep. 31, 11; V. Be. 24, 3. Conf. Ep. 44: Rank and birth are of no consequence. 1 Only the wise man is really free; all who are not wise are fools. 2 Diog. 122, at least, calls deoworeía, the possession and government of slaves, something bad. 3 According to Sen. Benef. iii. 22, 1, Cic. 1. c., Chrysippus had defined a slave, perpetuus mercenarius; and hence inferred that as such he ought to be treated: operam exigendam, justa præbenda. Sen. Ep. 47, expresses a very humane view of treating slaves. He regards a slave as a friend of lower rank, and, since all men stand under the same higher power, speaks of himself as conservus. 4 M. Aurel. iv. 4: ei td voepdv ἡμῖν κοινὸν, καὶ ὁ λόγος καθ' εν λογικοί ἐσμεν κοινός· εἰ τοῦτο, καὶ ὁ προστακτικὸς τῶν ποιητέων ἢ μὴ λόγος κοινός· εἰ τοῦτο, καὶ ὁ νόμος κοινός. εἰ τοῦτο, πολῖταί ἐσμεν· εἰ τοῦτο, πολιτεύματός τινος μετέχομεν· εἰ τοῦτο, ὁ κόσμος ὡσανεὶ πόλις ἐστί. CHAP. XII. CHAP. 3 connection of its parts,' they must have allowed, with far more reason, that the world, in the narrower sense of the term, including all rational beings, forms one community, to which individual communities are related, as the houses of a city are to the city collectively. Wise men, at least, if not others, will esteem this great community, to which all men belong, far above any particular community in which the accident of birth has placed them.* They, at least, will direct their efforts towards making all men feel themselves to be citizens of one community; and, instead of framing exclusive laws and constitutions, will try to live as one Plut. Com. Not. 34, 6, who makes the Stoics assert: τον κόσμον εἶναι πόλιν καὶ πολίτας τοὺς àoтépas. M. Aurel. x. 15: Soov ús év móλei tập nóσμq. iv. 3: ὁ κόσμος ὡσανεὶ πόλις, 2 M. Aurel. iv. 4, and ii. 16. Cic. Fin. iii. 20, 67: Chrysippus asserts that men exist for the sake of each other; quoniamque ea natura esset hominis ut ei cum genere humano quasi civile jus M. Aurel. iii.11: ǎveрwжоν TOλίτην ὄντα πόλεως τῆς ἀνωτάτης ἧς αἱ λοιπαὶ πόλεις ὥσπερ οἰκίαι εἰσίν. . . patriam 4 Sen. De Ot. 4; Ep. 68, 2. Vit. B. 20, 3 and 5: Unum me donavit omnibus [natura rerum] et uni mihi omnis meam esse mundum sciam et præsides Deos. Tranq. An. 4, 4: Ideo magno animo nos non unius urbis manibus clusimus, sed in totius orbis commercium emisimus patriamque nobis mundum professi sumus, ut liceret latiorem virtuti campum dare. Epict. Diss. iii. 22, 83. Ibid. i. 9: If the doctrine that man is related to God is true, man is neither an Athenian nor a Corinthian, but simply kóσuos and vids eoû. Muson. 1. c.: Banishment is no evil, since κοινὴ πατρὶς ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων ὁ κόσμος ἐστίν. It is, says Cic. Parad. 2, no evil for those qui omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducunt. family, under the common governance of reason.1 The platform of social propriety receives hereby a universal width. Man, by withdrawing from the outer world into the recesses of his own intellectual and moral state, becomes enabled to recognise everywhere the same nature as his own, and to feel himself one with the universe, by sharing with it the same nature and the same destiny. CHAP. XII. and the course of But, as yet, the moral problem is not exhausted. C. Man Reason, the same as man's, rules pure and complete in the universe; and if it is the business of man the world. to give play to reason in his own conduct, and to recognise it in that of others, it is also his duty to subordinate himself to collective reason, and to the course of the world, over which it presides. In conclusion, therefore, the relation of man to the course of the world must be considered. the course of nature. However decidedly the Stoics may, in principle, (1) Subinsist upon social propriety of conduct, this demand mission to for propriety resolves itself really into a demand for absolute resignation to the course of the universe, and is based quite as much upon the historical surroundings of their system as upon its intellectual principles. How, in an age in which political freedom was stifled by the oppression of Macedonian, and subsequently of Roman dominion, even the 1 Plut. Alex. M. Virt. i. 6 : καὶ μὴν ἡ πολὺ θαυμαζομένη πολίτεια τοῦ τὴν Στωϊκῶν αἵρεσιν καταβαλλομένου Ζήνωνος εἰς ἓν τοῦτο συντείνει κεφάλαιον, ἵνα μὴ κατὰ πόλεις μηδὲ κατὰ δήμους οἰκῶμεν, ἰδίοις ἕκαστοι διωρισμένοι δικαίοις, CHAP. Roman conquerors surrendering themselves to the despotism of an empire, in which Might, like a living fate, crushed every attempt at independent action-how, in such an age, could those aiming at a higher object than mere personal gratification have any alternative but to resign themselves placidly to the course of circumstances which individuals and nations were alike powerless to control? In making a dogma of fatalism, Stoicism was only following the current of the age. At the same time, as will be seen from what has been said, it was only drawing the necessary inferences from its own principles. All that is individual in the world being only a consequence of a general connection of cause and effect-being only a carrying out of a universal law-what remains possible, in the face of this absolute necessity, but to yield unconditionally? How can yielding be called a sacrifice, when the law to which we yield is nothing less than the expression of reason? Hence resignation to the world's course was a point chiefly insisted upon in the Stoic doctrine of morality. The verses of Cleanthes,' in which he submits without reserve to the leading of destiny, are a theme repeatedly worked out by the writers of this School. The virtuous. man, they say, will honour God by submitting his will to the divine In Epictet. Man. c. 53; more ἄγου δέ μ' ὦ Ζεῦ καὶ σύγ' ἡ Πεπρω- ὅποι ποθ' ὑμῖν εἰμι διατεταγ μένος· ὡς ἕψομαί γ' ἄοκνος· ἦν δὲ μὴ θέλω κακὸς γενόμενος οὐδὲν ἧττον ἕψο μαι. will; God's will he will think better than his own will; he will remember that under all circumstances we must follow destiny, but that it is the wise man's prerogative to follow of his own accord; that there is only one way to happiness and independencethat of willing nothing except what is in the nature of things, and what will realise itself independently of our will.1 Similar expressions are not wanting amongst other philosophers; nevertheless, by the Stoic philosophy, the demand is pressed with particular force, and is closely connected with its whole view of the world. In resignation to destiny, the Stoic picture of the wise man is completed. Resignation involves that peace and happiness of mind, that gentleness and friendliness, that idea of duty, and that harmony of life, which together make up the Stoic definition of virtue. Morality begins by recognising the 1 Sen. Prov. 5, 4 and 8: Boni viri laborant, impendunt, impenduntur, et volentes quidem, non trahuntur a fortuna, etc. Quid est boni viri? Præbere se fato. Vit. Be. 15, 5: Deum sequere. . . Quæ autem dementia est, potius trahi quam sequi?... Quicquid ex universi constitutione patiendum est, magno excipiatur animo. Ad hoc sacramentum adacti sumus, ferre mortalia. . . In regno nati sumus: Deo parere libertas est. Ep. 97, 2: Non pareo Deo, sed adsentior. Εκ animo illum, non quia necesse est, sequor, etc. Ep. 74, 20, 76, 23; 107, 9. Epictet. Diss. ii. 16, 42: τόλμησον ἀναβλέψας πρὸς τὸν θεὸν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι χρῶ μοι λοιπὸν εἰς 8 ἂν θέλῃς· ὁμογνωμονῶ σοι, σός 2 Sen. Ep. 120, 11, investigates CHAP. XII. |