The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

PRESENT-DAY VALUE OF STOICISM 239
But it is different with the first of the answers.
When Stoicism is opposed to systematic theology, and
particularly to the Christian faith (whether on scientific
or on other grounds), critical examination becomes
necessary. Marcus Aurelius is the Stoic in special now
selected for our 1
imitation, and his teaching
is offered
us as a worthy substitute for the so-called emasculated
conceptions of the dogmatic believer. No personal
God, no future life, no supernatural, but morality in its
virgin purity, independent of and unassisted by con
siderations of heaven or of hell, with a metaphysics
definite enough to rescue it from being absolutely
vague, yet not so precisely defined as to become dog
matic this is the gospel that can alone avail (so we
are told),
and that alone is worthy of an age of emanci
pated thought and scientific enlightenment. Renan
here leads the way. In his brilliant treatise on the
great Stoic Emperor, he designates
the Meditations
(or, as he calls them, the Thoughts]
"the
gospel for
those who do not believe in the supernatural,"
"a
veritable eternal gospel, which will
never grow old, for
it affirms no dogma. . . . Science may destroy God and
the soul, while the book of the Thoughts remains young
yet in life and truth. The religion of Marcus Aurelius,
as was occasionally that of Jesus, is the absolute re
ligion that which results from the simple
high moral conscience placed
fact of a
face to face with the
universe. It is neither of one race nor of one country.
No revolution, no advance, no discovery, can change
1 The popularity of Marcus Aurelius in Great Britain is seen,
inter alia, by the large number of English translations of the
Meditations made within the past ten years.