The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 61
with the enthusiasm of humanity and the desire to
reclaim and to reform mankind.
It was thus a real change that was effected when the
philosopher was transformed into the preacher, and the
attempt was made to win men to righteousness by
sweet reasonableness rather than by hard intellectual
disputation, and when ethics became dominated by a
religious motive and made it its chief aim to arouse the
conscience. The elements of the original system were
all there ;
but the combination of them was different,
and the use to which the whole was put was insistently
curative. The note was sounded clear and significant
"The
philosopher s school, ye men, is a surgery :
ought not to go out of it
pleased,
but pained."
you