The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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PRESENT-DAY VALUE OF STOICISM 249
and yet, in the cycle-revolution, to be reproduced again
with all its imperfections. The sinful, troubled, sorrow
ing individuals that now are, will be reborn to the same
sins, troubles, sorrows, time after time ;
no progress
being made in the future, nor advance of any kind.
This, certainly,
should have toned down the Stoic s
optimism ;
it
might have been expected, at any rate, to
strip it somewhat of its exuberance. It was, perhaps,
some such feeling as this that led a section of the later
Stoics notably Panaetius to dissent from the doctrine
of World-cycles, which had so fascinated the founders
of the School, and had been so carefully and fully
elaborated by Cleanthes. But their implicit trust in the
World-order remained, notwithstanding ;
and the Stoic s
attitude has its lessons for the moderns.
Once again, the high
estimate that the Stoics
entertained of human nature itself, as partaking of the
divine. Human reason is a part of the KOIVOS Xoyos, or
universal reason :
man s mind is god, an efflux
of deity
and worth, especially on the side of virtue and will
power
(Aurelius, Med. xii. 26). Hence man s dignity
or self-control.
Virtue and truth are the same
in man as in God." There is no great step from this to
the Scriptural teaching of man as made in the image of
God in our 1
image, after our likeness." It is a noble
view to take of a man (a) that he need not, if he care,
break the law of righteousness at all ; but, (b) that, if
he do break it, he has it in his power
to retrace his
steps and to regain his position. Only to a being
of transcendent worth could the motto be given as
1
Gen. i. 26.