Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

STOICISM ON THE THRONE. 207there engaged in uncongenial duties, amid the clashof arms and the bustle of the camp, he found solaceand distraction in the quiet hours of loneliness, whenhe could muse upon the problems of life, and thehigh themes of duty, and the mysteries that lie beforeand after.We maystill read the meditations written byhim in his journal at such times ; they are simple andunaffected in their style, intended probably to meetno eye but his own, but nowhere else is the morantyof paganism couched in so pure and high and reverenta spirit.The distinctive features of the Stoiccreed have been described already at sufficient length,and among them the less pleasing qualities whichseemed to be the natural outcome of the system,though often toned down and disguised by writerswhose instincts perhaps were better than their logic.It must be of interestof the emperor's aspirationsto us to note how far the idealcould be freed from thedisfigurements of such unlovely tenets of the schoolwhich he professed to follow.The Pantheism of the earher thinkers was expressedat times, as we have seen, with a glow oflyric and devotional fervour which reads like thelanguage of trueprayer,and the following strains ofpiety, enthusiastic as they are, might possibly belongto such a creed :—"Everything harmonizes with mewhich is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothingfor me is too early nor too late, which is in due timefor thee. Everything is fruit to me, which thy seasonsbring, O Nature : from thee are all :things in thee