- ing in that which is inevitable, shaping in the best way that
which is possible to be moulded. Upon this the practical ethics of Stoicism depend. But this is the very point which is absent in Ecclesiastes. The Catalogue of Times and Seasons ends not with the Stoic exhortation [Greek: ekplêrou tên chôran], 'Fulfil thy appointed part, but with the despondent reflection of the Fatalist, 'What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he toileth?" (iii. 9.) A second argument is that the idea There is no new thing under the sun (i. 9) is a phase of the Stoic doctrine of cyclical revolutions. But all that which gave form and colour to the Stoic doctrine is entirely absent—especially, as Mr. Tyler himself admits, the idea of [Greek: ekpurôsis]. The idea, as it is found in Ecclesiastes, has nothing Stoic or even philosophical about it. It is simply an old man's observation that human actions, like natural phenomena, tend to repeat themselves in successive generations.[1]
That there are analogies between Stoicism and the ideas of Koheleth need not be denied; Dr. Kalisch has collected some of them in his very interesting philosophico-religious dialogue.[2] Prominent among these is the peculiar use of the terms 'madness' and 'folly.' 'From the followers of Zeno,' remarks Dean Plumptre,[3] 'he learned also to look upon virtue and vice in their intellectual aspects. The common weaknesses and follies of mankind were to him, as to them, only so many different forms and degrees of absolute insanity (i. 17, ii. 12, vii. 25, ix. 3).' But this division of mankind into wise men and fools is common to the Stoa with the ancient Hebrew sages who 'sat in the gate.' When the great populariser of Stoicism says, 'Sapientia perfectum bonum est mentis humanæ,'[4] he almost translates more than one of the proverbs which we have studied already. Another point of contact with Stoicism is undoubtedly the Determinism of the
