The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

Moral
PREDECESSORS OF STOICS IN ETHICS 139
The world is always as it ought to be ;
l
it
must be our
part to accommodate ourselves to the universal order ;
the character of a man is his daemon [is
a god, rj6o<>
avOpdnria This
Sai/xon/]." means, at any rate, that the
world is so constructed as that character may appear
and develop in it, and that the crowning glory of human
beings is character is their right relation to one an
other, to the whole, and to the supreme reason in which
they share.
This was the pronounced teaching of the Stoics also.
To them, too, the world-order is ethical, and character
is man s highest concern and his greatest achievement.
To Heracleitus and to Zeno alike more still, perhaps,
to Zeus the
to Cleanthes, as judged by his Hymn
universal logos guides all things wisely and for the
best ;
and by all alike Matthew Arnold s definition of
the Supreme would have been accepted
"the Eternal
not ourselves that makes for righteousness." Ethics
conditions their pantheism, and makes it
glow. 3
1
This is viewed from the side of God, or sub specie ceternitatis^
as Spinoza would put
it ; it is only from man s standpoint that
some things appear just and others unjust.
2 Zeller, Pre-Socratic Philosophy, vol. ii.
pp. 97-98 (Eng\ tr.).
3
The conception of God as
"
World-Order" was repro
duced by Fichte in modern times. Wherein ethical pantheism is
inadequate, I have tried to point out in Theism as grounded in
Human Nature, pp. 394-396.