cordingly he views philosophy as a spiritual medicine, and gives more weight to the practice or exercise of virtue than the older Stoics did. The knowledge and the teaching of what is good, he says, should come first; but Rufus did not believe that the knowledge of the Good was strong enough without practice (discipline) to lead to moral conduct, and consequently he believed that practice has greater efficacy than teaching.[1] He makes two kinds of exercise, first, the exercise of the soul in thinking, in reflecting and in stamping on the mind sound rules of life; and second, in the enduring of bodily labours or pains, in which act of endurance the soul and the body act together.
“The sum of his several rules of life," says Ritter, may be thus briefly expressed: in his opinion a life according to Nature results in a social, philanthropic and contented state of mind, joined to the most simple satisfaction of our necessary wants. We see his social and philanthropic disposition in this that he opposes all selfishness (selbstsucht),
- ↑ I have followed the exposition of Ritter here. Perhaps a literal translation of the Greek is still better; “Reason which teaches how we should act co-operates with practice, and reason (or teaching) comes in order before custom (habit) or practice: for it is not possible to become habituated to any thing good if a person is not habituated by reason (by teaching); in power indeed the habit (practice) has the advantage over teaching, for habit (practice) in more efficacious in leading a man to act (properly) than reason is." I have given the meaning of the Greek as accurately as I can. In our modern education we begin with teaching general rules, or principles or beliefs; and there we stop. The result is what might be expected. Practice or the habit of doing what we ought to do is neglected. The teachers are teachers of words and no more. They are the men whom Epictetus (iii. 21, note 6) describes: "You have committed to memory the words only, and you say, Sacred are the words by themselves." See p. 245, note 3.
It is one of the greatest merits of Rufus that he laid down the principle which is expounded above; and it is the greatest demerit of our system of teaching that the principle is generally neglected: and most particularly by those teachers who proclaim ostentatiously that they give a religious education.
