Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPICTETUS.
live according to Nature was the Stoic formula. The
Epicurean would equally have accepted
it. But then his
Nature would have been the private particular nature of
the individual, with all its faults, flaws, and foibles, its
imperious passions and lusts. True, he would do his best,
according to the doctrine of his master, to give the higher
part of his nature full scope
in the conduct of his life.
But there would be nothing outside him to help him ;
nothing above him which could bring to bear any truth
on his decisions or moral pressure upon his conduct. To
live according
to Nature would after all be to do what
was right in his own eyes, and it
might easily be a very
base part of his nature according to which at last he came
to live. To the Stoic the word Nature had a much larger
and more authoritative meaning. He regarded himself as
under a Law that ruled equally men and States, and tides
and stars ;
and the voice of that Law was always sounding
in his ears, Virtue is the only good, vice is the only evil,
for man. To him Virtue had a sanction, a hold on his
conscience and his imagination, which in the case of the
rival system it utterly lacked ;
and accordingly under the
Stoic doctrine and discipline we might expect on the whole
a very high standard of moral action, and a high
tone of
moral conduct in the life.
The history of Stoicism justifies the expectation. It
contributed altogether the noblest men and the loftiest con
duct that we meet with in history, between the martyrdom
of Socrates and the preaching of St. Paul. For the Stoic
drew from his contemplation of this grand
universal Law
the conviction that there could be no idlers in the creation.
To keep quiet and enjoy was the maxim of Epicurus; the
Stoic thought
that man was sent here to bestir himself and
live. Stoicism contributed its full share of manly upright
and fearless characters to the service of humanity. Not