were given by mutilations, incurable diseases, and other disasters, —even by extreme pain; and when they were clearly given, wisdom and strength were as much manifested in following these leadings of nature or Providence as they were manifested at other times in resisting the seductions of pleasure and pain.

So far we have considered the "nature" of the individual man apart from his social relations; but it is cbvious that the sphere of virtue, as commonly conceived, les chiefly in such relations. And this was fully recognised in the Stoic account of duties (Kα0ýkovтα); indeed, their exposition of the "natural" basis of justice, the evidences in_man's mental and physical constitution that he was born not for himself but for mankind, is the most important part of their work in the region of practical morality. Here, however, we especially notice the double significance of

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natural," as applied to (1) what actually exists everywhere or for the most part, and (2) what would exist if the original plan of man's life were fully carried out; and we find that the Stoics have not clearly harmonised the two elements of the notion. That man was "naturally" a political animal Aristotle had already taught in the ideal view of nature which the Stoics framed, he was, we may say, cosmopolitical; for it was an immediate inference from the Stoic conception of the universe as a whole that all rational beings, in the unity of the reason that is common to all, form naturally one community with a common law. That the members of this "city of Zeus" should observe their contracts, abstain from mutual harm, combine to protect each other from injury, were obvious points of natural law; while, again, it was clearly necessary to the preservation of human society that its members should form sexual unions, produce

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§ 16. Stoics and

children, and bestow care on their rearing and training. But beyond this nature did not seem to go in determining the relations of the sexes; accordingly, we find that community of wives was a feature of Zeno's ideal commonwealth, just as it was of Plato's; and other Stoics are represented as maintaining, and illustrating with rather offensive paradoxes, the conventionality and relativity of the received code of sexual morality. Again, the strict theory of the school recognised no government or laws as true or binding except those of the sage; he alone is the true ruler, the true king. So far, the Stoic "nature" seems in danger of being as revolutionary as Rousseau's. Practically, however, this revolutionary aspect of the notion was kept for the most part in the background; the rational law of an ideal community remained peacefully undistinguished from the positive ordinances and customs of actual society; and the "natural" ties that actually bound each man to family, kinsmen, fatherland, and to unwise humanity generally, supplied the outline on which the external manifestation of justice was delineated.1 So, again, in the view taken by the Stoics of the duties of social decorum, and in their attitude to the popular religion, we find a fluctuating compromise between the tendency to repudiate what is artificial and conventional, and the tendency to revere what is actual and established; each tendency expressing in its own way an adhesion to the principle of "conforming to nature."

Among the primary ends of nature, in which wisdom Hedonists. recognised a certain preferability, the Stoics included free

1 It seems to have been a generally accepted maxim that the Stoic sage would take part in public life, unless some special obstacle prevented him; the critics of the school, however, observed that in practice such obstacles were usually found by the Stoic philosophers.

dom from bodily pain; but they refused, even in this outer court of wisdom, to find a place for pleasure. They held that the latter was not an object of uncorrupted natural impulse, but an "aftergrowth" (ñɩyévνnμa), a mere consequence of natural impulses attaining their ends. They thus endeavoured to resist Epicureanism even on the ground where the latter seems primâ facie strongest-in its appeal, namely, to the natural pleasure-seeking of all living things. Nor did they merely mean by pleasure (dový) the gratification of bodily appetite; e.g. we find Chrysippus urging, as a decisive argument against Aristotle, that pure speculation was "a kind of amusement, that is, pleasure." Even the "joy and gladness" (xapá, evdpooúvn) that accompany the exercise of virtue seem to have been regarded by them as merely an inseparable accident, not the essential constituent of wellbeing. Thus it is only by a later modification of Stoicism that cheerfulness or peace of mind is taken as the real ultimate end, to which the exercise of virtue is merely a means; in Zeno's system it is good volition, and not the feeling that attends it, which constitutes the essence of good life. At the same time, since pleasant feeling of some kind must always have been a prominent element in the popular conception of "wellbeing" or "welfare" (evdaovía), it is probable that the serene joys of virtue, and the grieflessness which the sage was conceived to maintain amid the worst tortures, formed the main attractions of Stoicism for most minds. In this sense, then, it may be fairly said that Stoics and Epicureans made rival offers to mankind of the same kind of happiness; the philosophical peculiarities of either system may

1 This modification-so far as I am aware-is not definitely to be found earlier than Cicero. Cf. post, p. 95, note 2.

be equally traced to the desire of maintaining that independence of the changes and chances of life which seemed essential to a settled serenity of soul. The Stoic claims on this head were the loftiest; as the wellbeing of their model sage was independent, not only of external things and bodily conditions, but of time itself; it was fully realised in a single exercise of wisdom and could not be increased by duration. This paradox is violent, but it is quite in harmony with the spirit of Stoicism; and we are more startled to find that the Epicurean sage, no less than the Stoic, is to be happy even on the rack; that his happiness, too, depends almost entirely upon insight and right calculation, fortune having very little to do with it, and is unimpaired by being restricted in duration, when his mind has apprehended the natural limits of life; that, in short, Epicurus makes hardly less strenuous efforts than Zeno to eliminate imperfection from the conditions of human existence. This characteristic is the key to the chief differences between Epicureanism and the more naïve hedonism of Aristippus. The latter system gave the simplest and most obvious answer to the inquiry after ultimate good for man; but besides being liable, when developed consistently and unreservedly, to offend the common moral consciousness, it admittedly failed to provide the "completeness" and "security" which, as Aristotle says, "one divines to belong to man's true Good." Philosophy, in the Greek view, should be the art as well as the science of good life; and hedonistic philosophy would seem to be a bungling and un

1 It was admitted by the Cyrenaics that even the sage could not count on a life of uninterrupted pleasure; and Theodorus, the frankest of the school, is said to have expressly taught that the sage would, under certain circumstances, commit theft, adultery, and sacrilege.

certain art of pleasure, as pleasure is ordinarily conceived. Nay, it would even be found that the habit of philosophical reflection often operated adversely to the attainment of this end; by developing the thinker's self-consciousness, so as to disturb that normal relation to external objects on which the zest of ordinary enjoyment depends. Hence we find that later thinkers of the Cyrenaic school felt themselves compelled to change their fundamental notion; thus Theodorus defined the good as "gladness" (xapá) depending on wisdom, as distinct from mere pleasure; while Hegesias proclaimed that happiness was unattainable, and that the chief function of wisdom was to render life painless by producing indifference to all things that give pleasure. But by such changes the system lost the support that it had had in the pleasure-seeking tendencies of ordinary men; indeed, with Hegesias the pursuit of pleasure has turned into its opposite, and one is not surprised to learn that this hedonist's lectures were forbidden as stimulating to suicide. It was clear that if philosophic hedonism was to be established on a broad and firm basis, it must somehow combine in its notion of good what the plain man naturally sought with what philosophy could plausibly offer. Such a combination was effected, with some little violence, by Epicurus; whose system, with all its defects, showed a remarkable power of standing the test of time, as it attracted the unqualified adhesion of generation after generation of disciples for a period of some six centuries.

Epicurus

Epicurus maintains, on the one hand, as emphatically as § 17. Aristippus, that pleasure is the sole ultimate good, and pain (341-270 the sole evil; that no pleasure is to be rejected except for B.C.) its painful consequences, and no pain to be chosen except as a means to greater pleasure; that the stringency of all,