The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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ETHICS: DEFECTS 199
a clog and hindrance, and gladly to be thrown off
like a worn garment.
"What am I? A poor soul
laden with a corpse said Epictetus
(Aurelius,
Med.
iv. 41).
But surely, the body is not this alien and despicable
something, to be classed among things not in our
power, along with possessions, riches, and the like,
and so to be summarily dismissed from our regard.
It is not something foreign to us and embarrassing,
but, on the contrary, a
constituent part of ourselves
helpful, controllable, desirable, to be tended and
cherished, and, as one of the most wonderful structures
of nature, to be gloried in. 1 It is not in the same
sense a thing external to us as are riches or property ;
and its health is
inseparably bound up with our highest
mental and moral good and welfare. The right view
of it is that expressed by Browning in his Rabbi Ben
Ezra :
"To man, propose this test
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way ?
Let us not always say,
Spite of this flesh to-day,
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole !
As the bird wings and sings,
*
Let us cry, All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh
helps soul.
For one thing, however, the Stoics are to be
commended :
they absolutely condemned slovenly
neglect of the body (thereby differing
from the Cynics)
1
So Athenagoras and the early Christian Apologists generally
(Justin Martyr, etc.) saw.