Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER387Lord-Dominus suits, as Cicero phrased it, using justthat Eoman word which expressed absolute propertywas extinct. The world was given up to a multitude of deities, who were indeed supposed to bepersonal, but were full of crimes and inconsistentwith each other, and who were not supposed to havemade man, though they presided in some sense overhuman society, and were its guardians. The dependenceallowed to exist between man and these beingswas not that of creatureship, wanting both its stringencyand its tenderness.Moreover it should be noted that the philosophicschool which most exalted the notion of duty restedit on quite a different ground from that of obedienceerson. The Stoic conception of life according toreason or nature was based on the principle that manshould submit himself to the control of what wasdivine in his own nature, the spark of mind whichwas in him for a time. The ground of this was threasonableness of the subjection of the part to thewhole, of the particular reason to the general, of somuch mind and matter put together to the unvaryingseries of physical cause and effect termed necessity.The particular reason in man which was called uponto submit was no more a creature than the universereason to which that submission was urged as a dutywas a creator. And the submission of the individualto the commonwealth, the basis of heathen patriotism,was closely akin to the Stoic notion of duty. Similarlyit had no limit; it had no moral reserve. Theindividual had no fortress in himself inexpugnable tohuman power, the fortress of the creature's will, supportedby the sense of obedience due to the Creator.In all this state there was nothing of personal devotion,LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE