The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

"
There
166 THE STOIC CREED
been put in any such higher place, will you immediately
make yourself a tyrant ? Will you not remember what
you are, and whom you rule?
that they are kinsmen,
that they are brethren by nature, that they are the
offspring of Zeus ? But I have purchased them, and
they have not purchased me ? Do you see where you
are looking? that it is towards the earth, that it is
towards the pitj that it is towards those wretched laws
of dead men ? But towards the laws of the gods you
are not looking." It was in answer to the question
whether a master may not sometimes accept a favour
from his slave that Seneca made the beautiful reply
is one parent of us all, the world (unus omnium
parens mundus x
est)." Purchase, property, of one man
by another is now seen to mean nothing
proprietorship : the superior is acknowledged
dependent
as to real
to be as
on the inferior as the inferior on the
superior ;
the power of helping
is not confined to one
class, but the lower may bless the higher, as the higher
the lower. That was a great step gained in the
advance of the larger thought. A common parentage
means mutual helpfulness and mutual love.
This cosmopolitanism and enthusiasm of humanity
had for the Stoic far-reaching consequences. It shaped
anew his doctrine of forgiveness of injuries making
;
him no longer stand aloof and refuse forgiveness to an
offending brother, but urging him to extend compassion,
on the plea that the injurer and the injured are both
akin
sharers in the same nature, members of the same
family. It
taught him, besides, the true function and
1
De Ben. iii. 28.