Chapter VI: Greek Philosophy and Modern Thought (3)

We have here, indeed, something comparable not only to the scepticism of the New Academy, but also to the Aristotelian criticism of Plato’s metaphysics; and, at first sight, it might seem as if the Peripatetic philosophy was destined once more to regain the position taken from it by the resuscitation of its ancient foe. But Locke was not inclined to substitute one form of scholasticism for another. By applying the analytical method of Atomism to knowledge itself, he created a weapon equally fatal to the two competing systems. Under his dissection, the concrete individual substance of the one vanished no less completely than the universal ideas of the other. Nothing remained but a bundle of qualities held together by a subjective bond.

Similarly, in political science, the analytical method of assuming civil government to result from a concurrence of individual wills, which with Hobbes had served only to destroy ecclesiastical authority, while leaving intact and even strengthening the authority of secular rulers, was reinterpreted by Locke as a negation of all absolutism whatever.

It is interesting to observe how, here also, the positive science of the age had a large share in determining its philosophic character. Founded on the discovery of the earth’s true shape, Aristotle’s metaphysics had been overthrown by the discovery of the earth’s motion. And now the claims of Cartesianism to have furnished an exact knowledge of matter and a definition of it whence all the facts of observation could be deduced _à priori_, were summarily refuted by the discovery of universal gravitation. The Cartesians complained that Newton was bringing back the occult qualities of the Schoolmen; but the tendency of bodies to move towards one another proved as certain as it was inexplicably mysterious. For a time, the study of causes was superseded by the study of laws; and the new method of physical science moved in perfect harmony with the phenomenism of Locke. One most important consequence of this revolution was to place the new Critical philosophy on a footing quite different from that occupied by the ancient sceptics. Both restricted certain knowledge to our own states of consciousness; but it now appeared that this might be done without impeaching the value of accepted scientific conclusions, which was more than the Academic philosophy would have admitted. In other words, granting that we were limited to phenomena, it was shown that science consisted in ascertaining the relations of these phenomena to one another, instead of to a problematic reality lying behind them; while, that such relations existed and were, in fact, part of the phenomena themselves, was what no sceptic could easily deny.

Nevertheless, in each case, subjective idealism had the effect of concentrating speculation, properly so called, on ethical and practical interests. Locke struck the keynote of eighteenth century philosophy when he pronounced morality to be ‘the proper science and business of mankind in general.’[574] And no sooner had morality come to the front than the significance of ancient thought again made itself apparent. Whether through conscious imitation, or because the same causes brought about the same effects, ethical enquiries moved along the lines originally laid down in the schools of Athens. When rules of conduct were not directly referred to a divine revelation, they were based either on a supposed law of Nature, or on the necessities of human happiness, or on some combination of the two. Nothing is more characteristic of the eighteenth century than its worship of Nature. Even the theology of the age is deeply coloured by it; and with the majority of those who rejected theology it became a new religion. But this sentiment is demonstrably of Greek origin, and found its most elaborate, though not its most absolute, expression in Stoicism. The Stoics had inherited it from the Cynics, who held the faith in greater purity; and these, again, so far as we can judge, from a certain Sophistic school, some fragments of whose teaching have been preserved by Xenophon and Plato; while the first who gave wide currency to this famous abstraction was, in all probability, Heracleitus. To the Stoics, however, is due that intimate association of naturalism with teleology which meets us again in the philosophy of the last century, and even now wherever the doctrine of evolution has not been thoroughly accepted. It was assumed, in the teeth of all evidence, that Nature bears the marks of a uniformly beneficent design, that evil is exclusively of human origin, and that even human nature is essentially good when unspoiled by artificial restrictions.

Yet if teleology was, in some respects, a falling-off from the rigid mechanicism first taught by the pre-Socratic schools and then again by the Cartesian school, in at least one respect it marked a comparative progress. For the first attempts made both by ancient and modern philosophy to explain vital phenomena on purely mechanical principles were altogether premature; and the immense extension of biological knowledge which took place subsequently to both, could not but bring about an irresistible movement in the opposite direction. The first to revive teleology was Leibniz, who furnished a transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century by his monadology. In this, Atomism is combined with Aristotelian ideas, just as it had previously been combined with Platonic ideas by Descartes. The movement of the atoms is explained by their aspiration after a more perfect state instead of by mechanical pressure. But while Leibniz still relies on the ontological argument of Descartes to prove the existence of God, this was soon abandoned, along with the cosmological argument, for the argument from design, which was also that used by the Stoics; while in ethics the fitness of things was substituted for the more mechanical law of self-preservation, as the rule of conduct; and the subjection of all impulse to reason was replaced by the milder principle of a control exercised by the benevolent over the malevolent instincts. This was a very distinct departure from the Stoic method, yet those who made it were more faithful to teleology than Stoicism had been; for to condemn human feeling altogether was implicitly to condemn the work of Nature or of God.

The other great ethical method of the eighteenth century, its hedonism, was closely connected with the sceptical movement in speculative philosophy, and, like that, received an entirely new significance by becoming associated with the idea of law. Those who isolate man from the universe are necessarily led to seek in his interests as such the sole regulator of his actions, and their sole sanction in the opinion of his fellows. Protagoras went already so far, notwithstanding his unwillingness to recognise pleasure as the supreme end; and in the system of his true successor, Aristippus, the most extreme hedonism goes hand in hand with the most extreme idealism; while with Epicurus, again, both are tempered by the influence of naturalism, imposing on him its conceptions of objective law alike in science and in practice. Still his system leaned heavily to the side of self-gratification pure and simple; and it was reserved for modern thought to establish a complete equilibrium between the two competing tendencies of Greek ethics. This has been effected in Utilitarianism; and those critics are entirely mistaken who, like M. Guyau, regard that system as a mere reproduction of Epicureanism. It might with full as much reason be called a modern version of Stoicism. The idea of humanity is essentially Stoic; to work for the good of humanity was a Stoic precept; and to sacrifice one’s own pleasure for that higher good is a virtue which would have satisfied the most rigorous demands of a Cleanthes, an Epictêtus, or an Aurelius.

Utilitarianism agrees with the ancient hedonism in holding pleasure to be the sole good and pain the sole evil. Its adherents also, for the most part, admit that the desire of the one and the dread of the other are the sole motives to action; but, while making the end absolutely universal and impersonal, they make the motive into a momentary impulse, without any necessary relation to the future happiness of the agent himself. The good man does his duty because doing it gives him pleasure, or because the failure to do it would give him pain, at the moment; although he knows that a contrary course would save him from greater pain or win him greater pleasure hereafter. No accurate thinker would call this acting from a selfish or interested motive; nor does it agree with the teaching of Epicurus. Were all sensitive beings to be united in a single organism, then, on utilitarian principles, self-interest, interpreted in the sense of seeking its own preservation and pleasure, would be the only law that the individualised aggregate could rationally obey. But the good of each part would be rigorously subordinated to the good of the whole; and utilitarian morality desires that we should act as if this hypothesis were realised, at least in reference to our own particular interests. Now, the idea of humanity as forming such a consolidated whole is not Epicurean. It belongs to the philosophy which always reprobated pleasure, precisely because its pursuit is associated with the dereliction of public duty and with bitter rivalry for the possession of what, by its very nature, exists only in limited quantities, while the demand for it is unlimited or, at any rate, far exceeds the supply. According to the Stoics, there was only one way in which the individual could study his private interest without abandoning his position as a social being, and this was to find it exclusively in the practice of virtue.[575] But virtue and public interest remained mere forms scantily supplemented by appeals to the traditional morality, until the idea of generalised happiness, of pleasure diffused through the whole community, came to fill them with substance and life.

It has also to be observed that the idea of utility as a test of moral goodness is quite distinct from hedonism. Plato proclaims, in the most unequivocal terms, that actions must be estimated by their consequences instead of by the feelings of sympathy or antipathy which they excite; yet no one could object more strongly to making pleasure the end of action. Thus, three distinct doctrines seem to converge in modern English ethics, of which all are traceable to Greek philosophy, but only one to Epicureanism in particular, and not ultimately to that but to the older systems whence it sprang.

And here we unexpectedly find ourselves confronted by a new relation between ancient and modern thought. Each acts as a powerful precipitant on the other, dissolving what might otherwise have passed for inseparable associations, and combining elements which a less complete experience might have led us to regard as necessarily incompatible with one another. The instance just analysed is highly significant; nor does it stand alone. Modern spiritualists often talk as if morality was impossible apart from their peculiar metaphysics. But the Stoics, confessedly the purest moralists of antiquity, were uncompromising materialists; while the spiritualist Aristotle taught what is not easily distinguishable from a very refined sort of egoism. Again, the doctrine of free-will is now commonly connected with a belief in the separability of consciousness from matter, and, like that, is declared to be an indispensable condition of morality. Among the Greeks, however, it was held by the materialist Epicureans more distinctly than by any other school; while the Stoics did not find necessarianism inconsistent with self-sacrificing virtue. The partial derivation of knowledge from an activity in our own minds is another supposed concomitant of spiritualism; although Aristotle traces every idea to an external source, while at the same time holding some cognitions to be necessarily true—a theory repudiated by modern experientialists. To Plato, the spirituality of the soul seemed to involve its pre-existence no less than its immortality, a consequence not accepted by his modern imitators. Teleology is now commonly opposed to pantheism; the two were closely combined in Stoicism; while Aristotle, although he believed in a personal God, attributed the marks of design in Nature to purely unconscious agencies.

IX.

The naturalism and utilitarianism of the eighteenth century are the last conceptions directly inherited from ancient philosophy by modern thought. Henceforward, whatever light the study of the former can throw on the vicissitudes of the latter is due either to their partial parallelism, or to an influence becoming every day fainter and more difficult to trace amid the multitude of factors involved. The progress of analytical criticism was continually deflected or arrested by the still powerful resistance of scholasticism, just as the sceptical tendencies of the New Academy had been before, though happily with less permanent success; and as, in antiquity, this had happened within no less than without the critical school, so also do we find Locke clinging to the theology of Descartes; Berkeley lapsing into Platonism; Hume playing fast and loose with his own principles; and Kant leaving it doubtful to which side he belongs, so evenly are the two opposing tendencies balanced in his mind, so dexterously does he adapt the new criticism to the framework of scholastic logic and metaphysics.

Meanwhile the strength of the analytical method was doubled by its extension to the phenomena of growth and change; for, as applied to these, it became the famous theory of Development or Evolution. No idea belongs so completely to modern philosophy; for even the ancient thinkers who threw their cosmology into a historical form had never attempted to explain the present by the past. If anything, they explained the past by the present, assuming a rough analogy to exist between the formation of the universe as a whole and the genesis of those natural or artificial bodies which were continually growing or being built up before their eyes. Their cosmology was, in fact, nothing but the old mythology stripped of its personal or conscious element; and, like it, was a hypothesis unsupported by any external evidence;—a criticism not inconsistent with the admission that to eliminate the supernatural element from speculation was, even in the absence of any solid addition to human knowledge, an achievement of inestimable value. The evolutionary method is also an elimination of the supernatural, but it is a great deal more. By tracing the history of compound structures to their first origin, and noting the successive increments to which their gradual growth is due, it reveals, as no statical analysis ever could, the actual order of synthesis, and the meaning of the separate constituents by whose joint action their movements are determined; while, conversely, their dissolution supplies us with a number of ready-made experiments in which the influence of each particular factor in the sum total may be detected by watching the changes that ensue on its removal. In a word, the method of evolution is the atomistic method, extended from matter to motion, and viewed under the form of succession instead of under the form of co-existence.

As a universal philosophy, the theory of Development, like every other modern idea, has only been permitted to manifest itself in combination with different forms of the old scholasticism. The whole speculative movement of our century is made up of such hybrid systems; and three, in particular, still divide the suffrages of many thinking men who have not been able entirely to shake off the influence of reactionary ideas. These are the systems of Hegel, of Comte, and of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In each, the logic and metaphysics inherited from Greek thought are variously compounded with the new science. And each, for that very reason, serves to facilitate the transition from one to the other; a part analogous to that played among the Greeks themselves by the vast constructions of Plato and Aristotle, or, in an age of less productivity, by the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies.

The influence of Aristotle has, indeed, continued to make itself felt not only through the teaching of his modern imitators, but more directly as a living tradition in literature, or through the renewed study of his writings at first hand. Even in the pure sciences, it survived until a comparatively recent period, and, so far as the French intellect goes, it is not yet entirely extinct. From Abélard on, Paris was the headquarters of that soberer scholasticism which took its cue from the Peripatetic logic; and the resulting direction of thought, deeply impressed as it became on the French character and the French language, was interrupted rather than permanently altered by the Cartesian revolution, and, with the fall of Cartesianism, gradually recovered its old predominance. The Aristotelian philosophy is remarkable above all others for clear definitions, full descriptions, comprehensive classifications, lucid reasoning, encyclopaedic science, and disinterested love of knowledge; along with a certain incapacity for ethical speculation,[576] strong conservative leanings, and a general tendency towards the rigid demarcation rather than the fruitful commingling of ideas. And it will probably be admitted that these are also traits characteristic of French thinking as opposed to English or German thinking. For instance, widely different as is the _Mécanique Céleste_ from the astronomy of Aristotle’s treatise _On the Heavens_, both agree in being attempts to prove the eternal stability of the celestial system.[577] The destructive deluges by which Aristotle supposes civilisation to be periodically interrupted, reappear on a larger scale in the theory of catastrophes still held by French geologists. Another Aristotelian dogma, the fixity of organic species, though vigorously assailed by eminent French naturalists, has, on the whole, triumphed over the opposite doctrine of transformism in France, and now impedes the acceptance of Darwin’s teaching even in circles where theological prepossessions are extinct. The accepted classifications in botany and zoology are the work of Frenchmen following in the footsteps of Aristotle, whose genius for methodical arrangement was signally exemplified in at least one of these departments; the division of animals into vertebrate and invertebrate being originally due to him. Bichat’s distinction between the animal and the vegetable functions recalls Aristotle’s distinction between the sensitive and nutritive souls; while his method of studying the tissues before the organs is prefigured in the treatise on the _Parts of Animals_. For a long time, the ruling of Aristotle’s _Poetics_ was undisputed in French criticism; and if anything could disentitle Montesquieu’s _Esprit des Lois_ to the proud motto, _Prolem sine matre creatam_, it would be its close relationship to the _Politics_ of the same universal master. Finally, if it be granted that the enthusiasm for knowledge, irrespective of its utilitarian applications, exists to a greater degree among the educated classes of France than in any other modern society, we may plausibly attribute this honourable characteristic to the fostering influence of one who has proclaimed more eloquently than any other philosopher that theoretical activity is the highest good of human life, the ideal of all Nature, and the sole beatitude of God.

It remains to add a few words on the position which ancient and modern philosophy respectively occupy towards theology. Here their relation is one of contrast rather than of resemblance. The Greek thinkers start at an immense distance from religious belief, and their first allusions to it are marked by a scornful denial of its validity. Gradually, with the transition from physical to ethical enquiries, an approximation between the two is brought about, though not without occasional returns to their former attitude of hostility. Finally, in presence of a common danger they become interwoven and almost identified with one another; while the new religion against which they make common cause, itself presents the same spectacle of metaphysical and moral ideas entering into combination with the spontaneous products of popular mythology. And be it observed that throughout the whole of this process action and reaction were equal and contrary. The decline and corruption of philosophy was the price paid for the elevation and purification of religion. While the one was constantly sinking, the other was constantly rising, until they converged on the plane of dogmatic theology. By the very circumstances of the case, an opposite course has been imposed on the development of modern philosophy. Starting from an intimate union with religion, it slowly disengages itself from the compromising alliance; and, although, here also, the normal course of ideas has been interrupted by frequent reactions, the general movement of European thought has been no less decidedly towards a complete emancipation from the popular beliefs than the movement of Greek thought had been towards their conciliation and support.

_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._

FOOTNOTES:

[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:—

‘Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn’st all simpler fare!
“Christ,” some one says, “was human as we are.
No judge eyes us from heaven our sin to scan;
We live no more, when we have done our span.”
“Well, then, for Christ,” thou answerest, “who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?
Live we, like brutes, our life without a plan!”
So answerest thou; but why not rather say:
“Hath man no second life?—_Pitch this one high!_
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?
_More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!_
Was Christ a man like us?—_Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he!_”’

—_The Better Part_, by Mr. Matthew Arnold.
The italics are in the original.

[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.

[155] This reminds one of the ‘pèlerinages,’ which figure along with
‘pigeon-shooting’ among the attractions offered by French country
hotels to idle visitors.

[156] _Republic_, II., 364, C, ff; Jowett’s transl., III., 234-5.
Elsewhere Plato proposes that these ‘bestial persons’ who persuade
others that the gods can be induced by magical incantations to pardon
crime, should be punished by imprisonment for life (_Legg_, X., 909, A,
f.).

[157] Villemain, _Life of Gregory VII._, Engl, transl., I., p. 305. As
a further illustration of the same subject, it may be mentioned that
there is a cemetery near Innsbruck (and probably many more like it
throughout the Tyrol) freely adorned with rude representations of souls
in purgatory, stretching out their hands for help from amid the flames.
The help is of course to be obtained by purchase from the priesthood.

[158] Lucret., I., 108-12.

[159] _Agamemnon_, 369 (Dindorf).

[160] Zeller, pp. 428-9.

[161] Prof. Sellar observes, as we think, with perfect truth,
that ‘there is no necessary connexion between the atomic theory
of philosophy and that view of the ends and objects of life which
Lucretius derived from Epicurus.’—_Roman Poets of the Republic_, p.
348, 2nd ed.

[162] Lucret., I., 1020 ff.; V., 835 ff; IV., 780 ff.; V., 1023; V.,
1307 ff.

[163] That Democritus attributed weight to his atoms has been proved,
in opposition to Lewes and others, by Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, I., p. 713
(3rd ed.)

[164] Woltjer, _Lucr. Phil._, p. 38.

[165] Arist., _Phys._, IV., viii., 216, a, 20.

[166] II., 257 ff.

[167] Lucret., IV., 875 ff.

[168] Lucret., V., 437 ff.

[169] Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, III., a, pp. 397-8. Reichel’s transl., pp.
412-3 (1st ed.)

[170] Woltjer (_Lucret. Ph._, p. 126) charges Lucretius with having
misunderstood his master on this point. As the sun and moon appear
larger when near the horizon than at other times, Epicurus thought
that we then see them either as they really are or a little larger.
This, Lucretius, according to Woltjer, took to mean that their general
apparent size may be a little over or under their real size.

[171] Zeller, p. 413.

[172] See, for instance, Woltjer, _op. cit._, p. 88.

[173] Zeller, p. 443, note 3.

[174] Zeller, pp. 417-8.

[175] Diog., X., 125.

[176] III., 922.

[177] Cicero, _De Fin._, I., ix., 30.

[178] ‘Aeque enim timent ne apud inferos sint, quam ne
nusquam.’—Seneca, _Epp._, lxxxii., 16.

[179] Cf. Plutarch, _Non posse suaviter vivi_, cap. xxvii.

[180] Among other feelings consequent on the first experience of death
among the posterity of Cain, the following are specified:—

‘It seemed the light was never loved before,
Now each man said, “‘Twill go and come no more.”
No budding branch, no pebble from the brook,
No form, no shadow but new dearness took
From the one thought that life must have an end;
And the last parting now began to send
Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss,
Thrilling them into finer tenderness.‘

[181] III., 59 ff.

[182] _Ethic._, Pars. IV., Prop. vii.

[183] _Ethic. Nic._, III., xii., 1117, b, 10 ff. Sir Alexander Grant, in his note on the passage, appositely compares the character of Wordsworth’s Happy Warrior, who is ‘More brave for this that he has much to love.’

[184] For the authorities, see Zeller, p. 388.

[185] Lucret., IV., 354, 728, 761.

[186] Such at least seems to be the theory rather obscurely set forth in Diog., X., 32.

[187] Diog., X., 33, Sextus Emp., _Adv. Math._, VII., 211-16; Zeller, p. 391.

[188] For additional authorities see Zeller, pp. 385-95, and Wallace’s _Epicureanism_, chap. x.

[189] See Woltjer, _Lucr. Ph._, p. 141 ff.

[190] _Morale d’Épicure_, p. 157.

[191] In a fragment quoted by Sextus Empiricus, _Adv. Math._, IX., 54.

[192] _Fragmenta Tragicorum_, Didot, p. 140.

[193] Zeller, p. 416, note 1.

[194] See the whole concluding portion of Lucr., bk. V.

[195] Chiefly by Ritter, _Gesch. d. Phil._, IV., p. 94, on which see the clear and convincing reply of Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 47.

[196] For details we must refer to the masterly treatise of Dr. Woltjer, already cited more than once in the course of this chapter.

[197] Cf. II., 18, with II., 172.

[198] The single exception to this rule that can be quoted is, we believe, the argument against impassioned love derived from its enslaving influence (_quod alterius sub nutu degitur aetas_, V., 1116). But to live under another’s nod is a condition eminently unfavourable to the mental tranquillity which an Epicurean prized before all things; nor, in any case, does it seem to have counted for so much with Lucretius as the ‘damnation of expenses’ which was no less formidable a deterrent to him than to the ‘unco guid’ of Burns’s satire.

[199] V., 1153-4.

[200] V., 1125.

[201] Ziegler (_Gesch. a. Ethik_, I., p. 203) quotes Lucret., III., 136, to prove that the poet recognised the existence of mental pleasures as such. But Lucretius only says that the mind has pleasures not derived from an immediate external stimulus. This would apply perfectly to the imagination of sensual pleasure.

[202] Woltjer, _op. cit._, p. 5.

[203] IV., 966.

[204] Woltjer, _op. cit._, pp. 178 ff.

[205] There is an unquestionable coincidence between Lucretius, II., 69 ff. and Plato, _Legg._, 776 B, pointed out by Teichmüller, _Geschichte der Begriffe_, p. 177. Both may have drawn from some older source.

[206] We think, however, that Prof. Sellar attributes more importance to this element in the Lucretian philosophy than it will bear. His words are: ‘The doctrine proclaimed by Lucretius was, that creation was no result of a capricious or benevolent exercise of power, but of certain processes extending through infinite time, by means of which the atoms have at length been able to combine and work together in accordance with their ultimate conditions. The conception of these ultimate conditions and of their relations to one another involves some more vital agency than that of blind chance or an iron fatalism. The foedera Naturai are opposed to the foedera fati. The idea of law in Nature as understood by Lucretius is not merely that of invariable sequence or concomitance of phenomena. It implies at least the further idea of a “secreta facultas” in the original elements.‘ (_Roman Poets of the Republic_, p. 335, 2nd ed.) The expression _secreta facultas_ occurs, we believe, only once in the whole poem (I., 174), and is used on that single occasion without any reference to the atoms, which do not appear until a later stage of the exposition. Lucretius is proving that whatever begins to exist must have a cause, and in support of this principle he appeals to the fixed laws which govern the growth of plants. Each plant springs from a particular kind of seed, and so, he argues, each seed must have a distinct or specific virtue of its own, which virtue he expresses by the words _secreta facultas_. But, according to his subsequent teaching, this specific virtue depends on a particular combination of the atoms, not on any spontaneous power which they possess of grouping themselves together so as to form organic compounds. With regard to the properties of the atoms themselves, Lucretius enumerates them clearly enough. They are extension, figure, resistance, and motion; the last mentioned being divided into downward gravitation, lateral deflection, and the momenta produced by mutual impact. Here we have nothing more than the two elements of ‘iron fatalism’ and ‘blind chance’ which Prof. Sellar regards as insufficient to account for the Lucretian scheme of creation; gravitation and mutual impact give the one, lateral deflection gives the other. Any faculty over and above these could only be conceived under the form of conscious impulse, or of mutual attractions and repulsions exercised by the atoms on one another. The first hypothesis is expressly rejected by the poet, who tells us (I., 1020) that the primordial elements are destitute of consciousness, and have fallen into their present places through the agency of purely mechanical causes. The second hypothesis is nowhere alluded to in the most distant manner, it is contrary to the whole spirit of Epicurean physics, it never occurred to a single thinker of antiquity, and to have conceived it at that time would have needed more than the genius of a Newton. As a last escape it may be urged that Lucretius believed in ‘a sort of a something’ which, like the fourth element in the soul, he was not prepared to define. But besides the utter want of evidence for such a supposition, what necessity would there have been for the infinite chances which he postulates in order to explain how the actual system of things came to be evolved, had the elements been originally endowed with the disposition to fall into such a system rather than into any other? For Prof. Sellar’s vital agency must mean this disposition if it means anything at all.

While on this subject we must also express our surprise to find Prof. Sellar saying of Lucretius that ‘in no ancient writer’ is ‘the certainty and universality of law more emphatically and unmistakably expressed’ (p. 334). This would, we think, be much truer of the Stoics, who recognised in its absolute universality that law of causation on which all other laws depend, but which Lucretius expressly tells us (II., 255) is broken through by the _clinamen_. A more accurate statement of the case, we think, would be to say that the Epicurean poet believed unreservedly in uniformities of co-existence, but not, to the same extent, in uniformities of sequence; while apart from these two classes neither he nor modern science knows of any laws at all.

[207] V., 695-73, 730-49.

[208] Cicero, _De Nat. Deor._, I., xxiv., 66.

[209] _Comm._, IX., 28.

[210] Coleridge’s _Friend_, Section II., Essay II., _sub in._

[211] ‘In the higher ranks of French society there are men who merit to be called professors of the art of happiness; who have analysed its ingredients with careful fingers and scrutinising eyes; who have consummated their experience of means and ends; who, like able doctors, can apply an immediate remedy to the daily difficulties of home-life; whose practice is worthy of their theory, and who prove it by maintaining in their wives’ hearts and in their own a perennial never-weakening sentiment of gratitude and love.‘ (_French Home Life_, p. 324.) Although Mr. Marshall’s observations are directly applicable to the happiness of married life only, they tend to prove that all happiness may be reduced to an art.

[212] Wallace’s _Epicureanism_, p. 37.

[213] Cicero, _De Rep._, III., vi.-xx.

[214] Plutarch, _Cato Major_, xxii. ff.

[215] Pindar, _Pyth._, III., 96.

[216] Vol. I., p. 46.

[217] It is said that the same ironical attitude continues to characterise the Greeks of our time. Col. Leake (quoted by Welcker, _Gr. Götterl._, II., p. 127) informs us that travellers in Greece are continually entertained with local fables which are everywhere repeated, but believed by nobody, least of all by the inhabitants of the district where they first originated. And Welcker adds, from his own experience, that the young Greeks who act as guides in the religious houses related the miraculous legends of the place with an enthusiasm and an eloquence which left him in doubt whether or not they themselves believed what they expected him to believe.

[218] _Il._, II., 80; XII., 238; XVI., 859; _Od._, I., 215; XI., 363; XXIII., 166; _Agamem._, 477 ff.

[219] Sextus Empiricus, _Adv. Math._, VII., 89 ff; Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, I., pp. 464, 652, 743, 828. (3rd ed.)

[220] For the theses of Gorgias see Sextus Empiricus, _Adv. Math._, VII., 65 ff.

[221] Sext. Emp., _Adv. Math._, VII., 170 ff.

[222] Xen., _Mem._, IV., iii., 14.

[223] _Timaeus_, 37, B, 43, D ff.

[224] Examples of these questions are: ‘Have you lost your horns?’ and, ‘Did Electra know that Orestes was her brother?’ Stated in words, she knew that he was; but she did not recognise him as her brother when he came to her in disguise.

[225] Plutarch, _Adv. Col._, xxii.-xxiii.; Seneca, _Epp._, ix.

[226] Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, III., a, 481; Diog. L., IX., xi.

[227] Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 484; Ritter and Preller, _Hist. Ph._, p. 336.

[228] ὡς χαλεπὸν εἴη ὁλοσχερῶς ἐκδῦναι ἄνθρωπον. For this and the other stories, see Diog. L., IX., 66-8.

[229] _Pyrrh. Hyp._, I., 28 ff.

[230] Diog. L., VII., 171.

[231] Cicero, _Acad._, II., xxiv., 77; Sext. Emp., _Adv. Math._, VII., 150-7; Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, III., a, pp. 492 ff.

[232] Plutarch, _De Comm. Notit._, i., 4; Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 81 (where, however, the reference to Plutarch is wrongly given).

[233] Εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἦν Χρύσιππος οὐκ ἂν ἦν ἐγώ. (Diog. L., IV., 62.) The original line ran, εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἦν Χρύσιππος οὐκ ἂν ἦν στοά.

[234] Sext. Emp., _Adv. Math._, VII., 159-65.

[235] That Carneades was the first to start this difficulty cannot be directly proved, but is conjectured with great probability by Zeller (_op. cit._, p. 504).

[236] Sext. _Pyrrh. Hyp._, II., 186. _Adv. Math._, VIII., 463.

[237] _Pyrrh. Hyp._, II., 195, 204.

[238] Cicero, _De Nat. Deor._, I., xxiii., 62; III., iv., 11; xvi., 42; xxi., 53.

[239] Sext., _Adv. Math._, IX., 182-3.

[240] Cic., _De Nat. Deor._, III., xviii., 47.

[241] Cic., _Acad._, II., xxxviii., 120; Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 506.

[242] Cic., _Acad._, _ibid._, 121; Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 507.

[243] Cic., _De Nat. Deor._, III., x., 24.

[244] _ibid._, III., xi., 27.

[245] _ibid._, ix., 21.

[246] _ibid._, III., xii., 29; I., xxxix., 109.

[247] Sext. _Adv. Math._, IX., 139-47.

[248] _ibid._, 152-77.

[249] Cic., _De Nat. Deor._, III., vi.; _De Divin._, II., _passim_; _De Nat. Deor._, III., xxvi. ff.

[250] _Le Christianisme et ses Origines_, II., p. 3.

[251] Sext., _Pyrrh. Hyp._, III., 2.

[252] Sext., _Adv. Math._, VII., 166-89.

[253] Cic., _De Fin._, III., xii., 41; Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 519.

[254] According to Zeller’s interpretation of Cicero, _Acad._, II., xi., 34.

[255] Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 602.

[256] _ibid._, p. 603.

[257] For the authorities see Zeller, _op. cit._, pp. 599-601.

[258] Zeller, _op. cit._, pp. 603-8.

[259] Zeller, _op. cit._, pp. 554, 561 ff.

[260] Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 575.

[261] Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 621.

[262] Cic., _Acad._, II., xlv.

[263] The treatises entitled _De Stoicorum Repugnantiâ_ and _De Communibus Notiliis_.

[264] Lucret., IV., 1154-64; Juven., VI., 186-95.

[265] Varro observes that for 170 years the ancient Romans worshipped their gods without images; ‘quod si adhuc,’ inquit, ‘mansisset castius Dii observarentur.’ And in the same passage, speaking of mythology, he says, ‘hoc omnia Diis attribuuntur quae non modo in hominem, sed etiam in contemtissimum hominem cadere possunt.’ Augustin., _De Civit. Dei_, IV., iii., and xxxi., quoted by Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 674.

[266] Ritter and Preller, _Hist. Phil._, p. 426; Woltjer, _Lucretii Philosophia_, p. 5.

[267] The services of Posidonius seem to have been overlooked by M. Gaston Boissier when he implies in his work on Roman Religion (vol. ii., p. 13) that Fabianus, a Roman declaimer under Augustus, was the first to give an eloquent expression to Stoicism.

[268] Zeller, _op. cit._, pp. 597-8.

[269] _Acad._, II., xxii., 69.

[270] _ibid._, xxxi., 99.

[271] _De Fin._, V., xxi., 59.

[272] _Acad._, II., xxxix.

[273] For the literary studies of Socrates, see Xenoph., _Mem._, I., vi., 14; those of Cicero are too manifest to need any special reference.

[274] See the passages quoted by Zeller, _op. cit._, pp. 659-60.

[275] _Acad._, I., x.

[276] _De Fin._, IV., viii.

[277] _De Off._, III., iii., 11.

[278] The passage occurs near the beginning of his Essay on Bacon.

[279] See the _Somnium Scipionis, De Repub._, VI., xvii.

[280] _ibid._, xxvi.

[281] _De Divin._, II., lxxii., 148; Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 667.

[282] l. 724 ff.

[283] l. 5-7, and 34-36.

[284] I., 231-51.

[285] The very passage (_Georg._, II., 475-92) which is supposed to refer to Lucretius contains a line (_frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis_) embodying the Stoic theory that the soul has its seat in the heart, and is nourished by a warm exhalation from the blood. See Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, III., a, p. 197.

[286] Zeller does indeed call Seneca and Marcus Aurelius ‘Platonising Stoics’ (_Ph. d. Gr._, III., b, p. 236, 3rd. ed.); but the evidence adduced hardly seems to justify the epithet.

[287] _Metamorph._, XV., 60.

[288] Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, III., a, p. 681.

[289] _Epp._, I., i., 18.