Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

88 STOICISM.human soul, in questions of justice and of honour,but neglects the interests of State meanwhile."Less prejudiced writers, though in more moderatelanguage, drew the same conclusions, and spoke likeTacitus of all such studies as suitable enough forearly youth, as a sort of intellectual gymnastic, but asquite unbecoming in maturer years; or like Pliny- theyounger, praised such of their friends as proved in theconduct of their life a piety, strength of mind, orjustice quite as great as that of any of the professorsof philosophy, and yet did not haunt the colonnadesor lecture-rooms, to waste their time in endless disputations,but were always to be seen in their officialdress in close attention to the affairs of State.It wasevident that large-minded, cultivated men, who had nolack of interest in moral questions, looked with somemisgiving at the growing popularity of the doctrinesof the Porch, which tended to distract men's thoughtsfrom the heat and press of active life, and led themto look for satisfaction in a sort of cloistered virtue,full of fine thoughts about their personal salvation,but of slight value to the struggling world below.The familiar arguments which have been so oftenurged in Christian lands against the spread of theconventual system find some sort of parallel in theprotests raised among the pagan society of Rome,that public duties were neglected and the responsibilitiesof workday life disparaged by the manyvotaries of mystic contemplation.These motives among others may probably haveinfluenced the ruling powers of Rome, which often