The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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THEOLOGY AND RELIGION 213
1
temperament of the Stoic, producing in him a cheerful
and willing" acquiescence in the ways of Providence :
non pareo deo, sed adsentior (Seneca, Ep. 96).
"So
long- as things that are to come are unknown to me,"
said Chrysippus,
I hold always by the things that
are more favourable for obtaining the things that are
1
according to nature ;
for God Himself made me such
as to choose these."
if, indeed," adds Epictetus,
I knew that it were now fated for me to be sick, I
would even myself move to it ;
for the foot also, if it
had intelligence, would move to be mired (Diss. ii. 6).
I am in harmony with all, that is a part of thy harmony,
great Universe," said Aurelius (Med. iv. 23). For me
nothing is early and nothing late, that is in season for
thee. All is fruit for me, which thy seasons bear, O
Nature !
from thee, in thee, and unto thee are all things.
*
Dear City of Cecropsf saith the poet: and wilt not
City of God ?
thou say,
This Stoical optimism is a most significant fact, and
has a lesson for the present time.
Among other things,
it
gives us in a very striking fashion a practical refuta
tion of the theory frequently advocated to-day, that
"temperament
and circumstance, not logic, make the
difference between a pessimist and an optimist."
1
That
temperament and circumstance count for much, is
quite true ; but, were they all-potent, Stoicism ought
to have been the most pessimistic of creeds, for there
have seldom been darker, sadder times than those
which it was propagated at Rome. If ever it were
justifiable for a man to take the worst possible view of
the government of the universe and to maintain on
in
1
Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic s Apology, p. 177.