The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

50 THE STOIC CREED
primary value (honestuni), actions, duties, exhortations
and dissuasions." "This is the division," says Dio
genes Laertius (vii. 51), "made
by Chrysippus, and
Archedemus, and Zeno of Tarsus, and Apollodorus, and
Diogenes, and Antipater, and Posidonius ;
for Zeno of
Citium, and Cleanthes, belonging to an earlier date,
treat of these things more simply."
Hence, also, the Stoical Ethics, although not in
any
systematic fashion, traversed the whole range of Prac
tical Philosophy this, at any rate, in the Roman period.
Not only did it
occupy itself with character and conduct
(which is the province of Ethics, strictly conceived),
but it took in hand also the investigation of the Emo
tions, Politics or the science of human beings formed
into societies (the equivalent of the modern Sociology
and Economics), and Natural Theology, or the Know
ledge of God, and determination of the relations be
tween Him and man over and above the theological
speculations
of the physics.
It did, further, as seen pre-eminently in Epictetus,
show its intensely practical character by laying down
rules for the guidance of the individual in the discharge
of his duties and social relations, 1 and as a means of
life. For
testing his progress (irpoKOTrr)) in the higher
the same purpose,
it counselled systematic self-exami
nation review, every night or evening, of one s con-
^duct during the day, so as to ascertain ;,
precisely what
"one had done well, and thereby find encouragement,
or done ill, and thereby be stimulated to amendment. 2
It even discoursed on the ethics of reading books
1
See, e.g., Epictetus, Diss. Hi. 16 ;
and Seneca, Ep. 94.
2
See also Seneca, De Ird,
iii. 36.