The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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THE STOIC CREED
in all essentials, by Plato in the Apologia
and the
Phczdo. The real Socrates was characterized by
religious reverence and personal piety (Xenophon and
Plato alike e.g., in Euthyphro being witnesses), and
his teleology
is strict and definite so much so that it
commended itself as a model to
natural theologians in
Christendom for many centuries. Nor are his views
on Immortality less striking (Xenophon and Plato,
again, being at one here) ; although
it is not often
observed that the ultimate conclusion that Socrates
reaches is a guarded one. Of the immortality of the
soul, he affirms, he is
personally convinced, but he
does not profess that he can prove
it
by irrefragable
argument absolute demonstration is impossible in the
matter. "It came to me," he says, "apart
from de
monstration, with a sort of natural likelihood and
fitness." That is all ;
but it is much.
Apart, however, from positive doctrine, Socrates was
practically the founder of mental and moral science, and
the great stimulator to philosophic thought because of
his firm grasp of the inductive method applied to mental
and moral subjects and carried systematically out in his
peculiar dialectic of cross-examination, and because of
the variety and many-sidedness of his ideas, leading
to great developments in the hands of his pupils.
Although gruff and even repulsive in his outward
person, he had the extraordinary magnetic power of
attracting and stimulating thinking men of all tempera
ments, and of sowing seeds that should germinate and
grow in many different soils. That he should have laid
hold on the heart and the imagination of Plato, and