Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE RIGOUR OF ITS ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES. 51local limits to the sphere of universal law. He willnot neglect, indeed, the duties that lie readyto hishand ;he will respect the ties of family and country,though he will not let them bound his horizon ofbenevolence, and will often have to rise above theirincomplete and sordid maxims. Much of the Stoiclanguage on this subject may be, no doubt, explainedwith reference to the circumstances of their age,when the free commonwealths of Greece were overshadowedby the power of Macedon, and wider sympathiesand freer thought replaced the narrow intensityof the old Hellenic standards. Something wasdue, also, to the fact that the earlier Stoics were notcommonly of Greek descent, but came from theislands or the coasts of Asia, where Semitic influencehad largely modified the bias givenin the schools ofAthens. But apart from this, the leading principlesof their Stoic theory must have tended to discouragethe zeal of the patriot and the efforts of the statesman.As an able and learned critic has remarked,^ " aphilosophy which attaches moral value to the culti.vation of intentions only, considering all externalcircumstances at the same time as indifferent, canhardly produce a taste or a skill for overcoming thoseoutward interests and circumstances with which apolitician is chiefly concerned. A system. which regardsthe mass of men as fools, which denies to themevery healthy endeavour and all true knowledge, canhardly bring itself unreservedly to work for a State,'Zeller. Translation by Reichel, p. 307.E 2