The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

242 THE STOIC CREED
So that, thus far, we may very readily acquiesce in
the verdict of Matthew Arnold, himself a Stoic in very
large measure. he "In general," says,
Marcus Aurelius prescribes is action which every sound
"the action
nature must recognise as right, and the motives he
assigns are motives which every
clear reason must
recognise as valid. And so he remains the especial
friend and comforter of all clear-headed and scrupulous,
yet pure-hearted and upright, striving men, in those
ages most especially that walk by sight, not by faith,
but yet have no open vision. He cannot give such
souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them
"
much ;
and what he gives them, they can receive
(Essays in Criticism, vol. i. p. 378).
But, over and above this, there is
clearly discernible
in Aurelius a supernatural strain ;
and neither he nor
any of the greater Roman Stoics were anti-supernaturalists,
in the sense of the modern rationalist or
freethinker. They delighted to view the world, as
Spinoza did, sub specie cetcrnitatis. They were, for
the most part, believers in divination and in the pro
priety and utility of prayer ; and even Renan has to
admit that, in the Meditations, there is just "a little f
insignificant spot"
of the supernatural,
"which does
not mar the marvellous beauty of the whole." Yea,
in Epictetus and in Seneca, the world and its
govern
ance are set forth in a view that comes remarkably
near St. Paul s conception
of the God in whom we
live and move and have our being ;
and their ethical
theory, with its pronounced
the solidarity of the race, might, but for
altruism and doctrine of
the inversion
of historical sequence, be designated emphatically