Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

SENECA AND ST. PAUL, 177there could not be in a system which discouraged allemotional fervour as the sorry weakness of our lowernature. Our moralist, indeed, himself was tender andwarm-hearted, because his philosophy had failed tospoil the good qualities which nature gave him. Inhis hands the system lost in rigorous logic whatitgained in true humanity. He traces, for example,the portrait of the sage in which, true to the definitionof his school, he treats compassion as unmanly weakness." To feel pain and grief for the misfortunes ofanother, to weep at the sight of suffering, is aweakness unworthy of the sage, for nothing shouldcloud his serenity or shake his firmness. Yet hewill readily do everything to which compassionprompts the souls that yield to it ;he will succourthe shipwrecked, welcome the exiled, and relievethe indigent. He will restore to the distractedmother her lost son, will ransom him from bondage ;like the gods, will let no misery pass unnoticed, butwill help those who need it most. His benevolencewill reach even to those who mainly suffer theirdeserts, but he will not make much ado or be unmannedat the sight of a poor beggar's emaciatedform or dirty rags. Only weak eyes get flushed andpainful at the sight of the iophthalmia of others."We have already seen indeed that there are manypassages in his letters which are quite inconsistentwith such teaching, pointing as they do both byprecept and example to tenderer sympathies and play'Clem. ii. 6.N