Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS. 15
sense this was a development ; a development provided there
was a further progress beyond. If it had ended there, if it
had only substituted the self-enfolded man for the citizen
prepared to serve as judge, to legislate, to fight
and to die for
his country, it would have been an utter and fatal degrada
tion. But if the man thus isolated and made conscious of his
personal interests and responsibilities,
could be taken hold of
by some loftier discipline, if educated in this way to a higher
point he could be brought into new and more fruitful
relations with his fellows, then it
might be a very valuable
step in the unfolding
of the destinies of the human world.
That if Christianity answered; that discipline the Gospel
of Jesus and the Eesurrection supplied.
Epicurean and Stoic occupied
themselves with this same
question, How shall a man secure his personal happiness ?
So far they
were twin shoots out of the same stem. And let
it be added that there was a latent scepticism in both of
them, -though they rose in protest against Scepticism, and
tried to supply a positive rule of life to man, based on a
certain view of the order of the world. They
were both in
their main attitude defensive. They had no deep belief in the
Tightness and the goodness of the system of things around
them ;
and their secret thought was to arm themselves
against it to the utmost of their power. Possessed by this
inner scepticism about the capacity of man to arrive at
truth, and the duty of man to search for it, they neither of
them cared for the pursuit of truth for its own sake. Dialec
tic they utterly despised. They sought
to know what would
make for happiness, and cared for nothing beyond. But yet
have a rule of
they were not sceptics. An utter sceptic may
life, and a very good one as far as it goes. But when a man
bases his rule of life on what he can discern of the order of the
world, however insufficient, however false, his notion may be,
he rises out of Scepticism, and has earned a title to the sacred