The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

198 THE STOIC CREED
But he is a bad father. Were you then by nature
settled with a good father ? Nay, but with a father.
My brother wrongs me. Preserve then your own
position towards him, nor scrutinize what it is that he
is doing, but what it is necessary for yourself to do
that your will may be according to nature. For
another will not damage you, unless you yourself will
it ;
but then will you be damaged when you imagine
that you are damaged."
Valuable as the doctrine
Ill
of adiaphora or indifferent
things was as a protest against moral materialism
and self-indulgence, still, in its strictest form, it was
too unbending ; and, even to the end, the Stoic Ethics
never shook itself entirely free of inadequate notions of
some of the things that it
regarded
is
as indifferent. It
obvious to remark that the doctrine, unless properly
safeguarded, might easily lend itself to abuse and lead
to antinomianism ; and, as a matter of fact, it did so
lead among the Stoics themselves in particular cases.
But the conclusion is
by ^o means necessary or logical.
The most that can be said is, that the doctrine affords a
ready excuse, though no real justification, to him who
wishes to live loosely, and that it does not sufficiently
conserve the ordinary civilities and proprieties of life.
Two views of the Stoics in special, in this connexion,
call for remark their view of the Body and their view
of Death.
As being one of the adiaphora^ the Body was conceived
as alien to man, enslaved to disease and evil chance,