Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

TEMPERED BV CONCESSIONS TO COMMON SENSE. 57was singularly hopeless in its tone while ; Jewishbooks looked forward and spoke ever of a good timecoming, and had for the burden of their prophecythe bold, strong words " ''for ever," to the wisest evenof the seers of pagandom, society seemed to revolvein fated cycles, and man's life to have little chanceof being ever a gladder or a worthier thing. Butnow, one after another leading Stoir addressed himselfto the work of moral education ;the ascetic lifewas to be, as its name implies, a course of training,not an idle and contemptuous protest at the refinementsof our civilized life, but a series of experimentsto test the soul's native power to resist temptationand unloose the coils of habit.In softening down the outlines of their picture ofperfection, it was natural to relax the rigour of theapathy which had been made one of its marked features.It had been often urged already by Greekcritics, that Reason was not of itself an ultimatesource of action ; itsprovince was to sift and to comparethe elements of choice, and to step in withauthority among the various Desires, but not to setthe Will in motion byitself.If left to Reason's rulealone, without a motive force to stir it,the complexmachinery could never work, and apathy must shortlyend in complete stagnation of the natural system.In answer to such arguments, the Stoics said thatthere were reasonable states of feeling which mightl-and must exist in the wise man.Nothing passionateor turbulent, indeed, could be allowed there, onlythe gentlest ripples on the current of emotion ;and