The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

138 THE STOIC CREED
hence the attractiveness of the doctrine and its spread
over the world. And connected, too, with the positive
and constructive impulse of Stoicism, we may reckon
its plastic character, its external eclecticism, and its
tendency to be influenced and modified by the course
of surrounding civilisation."
Ill
One other name needs here to be mentioned namely,
We have already seen how deeply
that of Heracleitus.
indebted the Stoics were to Heracleitus s physics (see
p. 87). It is most likely that they were influenced
also by his ethics at ; any rate, he held views allied to
theirs, and was the first in Greek philosophy to express
such. These were associated with his doctrine of logos,
or the universal reason. The world, according to him,
is
permeated by reason. This all-pervasive reason is
not simply intellectual, but also ethical. Order as
natural law exists everywhere in the universe, but
that order is beneficent and rewards him who subjects
himself to it. The phenomena of nature have an
ethical significance, and may be interpreted as a guide
to human conduct. "The wise man will despise that
for which the masses strive, as a worthless and perish
able thing. He will not take his own caprices, but the
common law, for his standard ;
will avoid nothing more
than presumption, the overstepping of the bounds
which are set for the individual and for human nature ;
and in thus subjecting himself to the order of the whole,
he will reach that satisfaction which Heracleitus is said
to have declared to be the highest end of life. It
depends only upon man himself whether he is
happy.