of life, that the number of our necessities may be as few as possible, and in placing the business of life in intellectual and moral action, it destroys the temptation to sensual gratifications. It teaches a contempt of death so complete that it can be encountered without a flutter of the pulse; and, while it raises men above the suffering which makes others miserable, generates a proud submissiveness to sorrow which noblest natures feel most keenly, by representing this huge scene and the shows which it presents as the work of some unknown but irresistible force, against which it is vain to struggle and childish to repine.
As with Calvinism, a theoretic belief in an overruling will or destiny was not only compatible with but seemed naturally to issue in the control of the animal appetites. The Stoic did not argue that, ‘as fate governs all things, I can do no wrong, and therefore I will take my pleasure;’ but rather, ‘The moral law within me is the noblest part of my being and compels me to submit to it.’ He did not withdraw from the world like the Christian anchorite. He remained at his post in the senate, the Forum, or the army. A Stoic in Marcus Aurelius gave a passing dignity to the dishonoured purple. In Tacitus, Stoicism has left an eternal evidence how grand a creature man may be, though unassisted by conscious dependence on external spiritual help, through steady disdain of what is base, steady reverence for all that deserves to be revered, and inflexible integrity in word and deed.
But Stoicism could under no circumstances be a
