The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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ETHICS: DEFECTS 201
philosophy that makes men such persons ? Not so I ;
would not do it, even though I were going to become a
wise man." 1
In like manner, Death is not the thing
indifferent,"
to which we may sit so loose that we may lawfully court
it when we think fit. The countenancing of suicide
2
is
(elayojyr/) a chief blot in the Stoic Ethics. Doubtless,
it fell in with the Stoic teaching about adiaphora : we
are not to fear death, but, seeing
that it must come to
us some time, must be ready to meet it at any time.
But it is really subversive of the Stoics great principle
that a man is sufficient for himself that inward calm
may be maintained, and complete satisfaction found in
the soul. To despise death, or not to dread it, when it
comes in the course of nature, is one thing ; to court
death, and of our own accord to effect it, is quite
another. We have a duty towards life, as well as to
wards death ;
and we must take care that courage as
it
faces the latter do not mean cowardice turning away
from the former. 3
Moreover, as Plato urged, a man s
life is not his own, but God s, and can be given up only
when He recalls it.
This the Stoics, being thoroughly
1
For the remainder of the passage about the unkempt young
man, see Chapter III. p. 55.
2
Spinoza, who had so much in common with the Stoics in Ethics,
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says of suicide : Persons who kill themselves are impotent in
mind, and have been thoroughly conquered by external causes
repugnant to their nature (Ethica, iv. 18).
3
Speaking of courage, Aristotle very fitly says (Nic. Eth.
iii.
7): "To seek death as a refuge from poverty, or love, or
any painful thing, is not the act of a brave man, but of a coward.
For it is effeminacy thus to fly from vexation ;
and in such a case
death is accepted, not because it is noble, but simply as an escape
from evil."