The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

"
Ad
ISO
THE STOIC CREED
grief, or even to joy or to lust 1
;
nor does he experience
pity or compassion, or show forgiveness, 2 for he cannot
compassionate or
pardon another, who, he conceives,
is
simply suffering from what he himself, if such suffer
ing were his, would regard as no evil. 3
Hence, further,
the ideal sage has no desire for fame, and scorns the
pursuit of it, and is relieved from all anxiety above
4
both the future and the past. He is thus the equal
of Zeus himself ;
and to him, if the doctrine is to be
consistently carried out, Zeus becomes "a
subject for
compliments, rather than a power
with." As Horace puts it (Ep. i. i, 106-7) :
to be reckoned
summam, sapiens tino minor est Jove, dives,
Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum."
"The ultimate end,"
said Ariston,
"is to live in
entire indifference towards the things that are inter
mediate between virtue and vice, not making any
distinction between them, but treating all as equal ;
for the wise man is like a good actor, who, whether
he personates Thersites or Agamemnon, plays the part
of each fitly" (Diog. Laert. vii. 2). 5
It is on the ground of this same indifference towards
things external that the Stoic both permitted and,
1
The Stoics, according- to Cicero, classified the emotions in a
fourfold way two of them having respect to goods (namely, joy
;
and lust) and two to evils (namely, fear and grief). Under each of
the four, they had many groups or subdivisions ;
and their delight
in minute distinctions may very well be seen from examples in the
Tusculan Disputations, bk. iv.
"the vice of a
2
See Seneca, De dementia, ii. He calls pity
petty spirit (est enitn vitium pusilli animi)."
3
See Diog. Laert. vii. 64.
4
See Aurel. Med. ii. 14.
5
For a characterization of the wise man, see Diog. Laert. vii. 64.