ONE:"At the present moment I could not swear to my own," Bruce said helplessly.No one will deny that the life of the Greeks was stained with foul vices, and that their theory sometimes fell to the level of their practice. No one who believes that moral truth, like all truth, has been gradually discovered, will wonder at this phenomenon. If moral conduct is a function of social life, then, like other functions, it will be subject, not only to growth, but also to disease and decay. An intense and rapid intellectual development may have for its condition a totally abnormal state of society, where certain vices, unknown to ruder ages, spring up and flourish with rank luxuriance. When men have to take women along with them on every new path of enquiry, progress will be considerably retarded, although its benefits will ultimately be shared among a greater number, and will be better insured against the danger of a violent reaction. But the work that Hellas was commissioned to perform could not wait; it had to be accomplished in a few generations, or not at all. The barbarians were forcing their way in on every side, not merely with the weight of invading armies, but with the deadlier pressure of a benumbing superstition, with the brute-worship of Egypt and the devil-worship of Phoenicia, with57 their delirious orgies, their mutilations, their crucifixions, and their gladiatorial contests. Already in the later dramas of Euripides and in the Rhodian school of sculpture, we see the awful shadow coming nearer, and feel the poisonous breath of Asia on our faces. Reason, the reason by which these terrors have been for ever exorcised, could only arrive at maturity under the influence of free and uninterrupted discussion carried on by men among themselves in the gymnasium, the agora, the ecclsia, and the dicastery. The resulting and inevitable separation of the sexes bred frightful disorders, which through all changes of creed have clung like a moral pestilence to the shores of the Aegean, and have helped to complicate political problems by joining to religious hatred the fiercer animosity of physical disgust. But whatever were the corruptions of Greek sentiment, Greek philosophy had the power to purge them away. Follow nature became the watchword of one school after another; and a precept which at first may have meant only that man should not fall below the brutes, was finally so interpreted as to imply an absolute control of sense by reason. No loftier standard of sexual purity has ever been inculcated than that fixed by Plato in his latest work, the Laws. Isocrates bids husbands set an example of conjugal fidelity to their wives. Socrates had already declared that virtue was the same for both sexes. Xenophon interests himself in the education of women. Plato would give them the same training, and everywhere associate them in the same functions with men. Equally decisive evidence of a theoretical opposition to slavery is not forthcoming, and we know that it was unfortunately sanctioned by Plato and Aristotle, in this respect no better inspired than the early Christians; nevertheless, the germ of such an opposition existed, and will hereafter be pointed out.
FORE:The treatment of the passions by the Stoic school presents greater difficulties, due partly to their own vacillation, partly to the very indefinite nature of the feelings in question. It will be admitted that here also the claims of duty are supreme. To follow the promptings of fear or of anger, of pity or of love, without considering the ulterior consequences of our action, is, of course, wrong. For even if, in any particular instance, no harm comes of the concession, we cannot be sure that such will always be the case; and meanwhile the passion is23 strengthened by indulgence. And we have also to consider the bad effect produced on the character of those who, finding themselves the object of passion, learn to address themselves to it instead of to reason. Difficulties arise when we begin to consider how far education should aim at the systematic discouragement of strong emotion. Here the Stoics seem to have taken up a position not very consistent either with their appeals to Nature or with their teleological assumptions. Nothing strikes one as more unnatural than the complete absence of human feeling; and a believer in design might plausibly maintain that every emotion conduced to the preservation either of the individual or of the race. We find, however, that the Stoics, here as elsewhere reversing the Aristotelian method, would not admit the existence of a psychological distinction between reason and passion. According to their analysis, the emotions are so many different forms of judgment. Joy and sorrow are false opinions respecting good and evil in the present: desire and fear, false opinions respecting good and evil in the future.53 But, granting a righteous will to be the only good, and its absence the only evil, there can be no room for any of these feelings in the mind of a truly virtuous man, since his opinions on the subject of good are correct, and its possession depends entirely on himself. Everything else arises from an external necessity, to strive with which would be useless because it is inevitable, foolish because it is beneficent, and impious because it is supremely wise.The third great idea of Stoicism was its doctrine of humanity. Men are all children of one Father, and citizens37 of one State; the highest moral law is, Follow Nature, and Nature has made them to be social and to love one another; the private interest of each is, or should be, identified with the universal interest; we should live for others that we may live for ourselves; even to our enemies we should show love and not anger; the unnaturalness of passion is proved by nothing more clearly than by its anti-social and destructive tendencies. Here, also, the three great Stoics of the Roman empireSeneca, Epicttus, and Marcus Aureliusrather than the founders of the school, must be our authorities;82 whether it be because their lessons correspond to a more developed state of thought, or simply because they have been more perfectly preserved. The former explanation is, perhaps, the more generally accepted. There seems, however, good reason for believing that the idea of universal lovethe highest of all philosophical ideas next to that of the universe itselfdates further back than is commonly supposed. It can hardly be due to Seneca, who had evidently far more capacity for popularising and applying the thoughts of others than for original speculation, and who on this subject expresses himself with a rhetorical fluency not usually characterising the exposition of new discoveries. The same remark applies to his illustrious successors, who, while agreeing with him in tone, do not seem to have drawn on his writings for their philosophy. It is also clear that the idea in question springs from two essentially Stoic conceptions: the objective conception of a unified world, a cosmos to which all men belong;38 and the subjective conception of a rational nature common to them all. These, again, are rooted in early Greek thought, and were already emerging into distinctness at the time of Socrates. Accordingly we find that Plato, having to compose a characteristic speech for the Sophist Hippias, makes him say that like-minded men are by nature kinsmen and friends to one another.83 Nature, however, soon came to be viewed under a different aspect, and it was maintained, just as by some living philosophers, that her true law is the universal oppression of the weak by the strong. Then the idea of mind came in as a salutary corrective. It had supplied a basis for the ethics of Protagoras, and still more for the ethics of Socrates; it was now combined with its old rival by the Stoics, and from their union arose the conception of human nature as something allied with and illustrated by all other forms of animal life, yet capable, if fully developed, of rising infinitely above them. Nevertheless, the individual and the universal element were never quite reconciled in the Stoic ethics. The altruistic quality of justice was clearly perceived; but no attempt was made to show that all virtue is essentially social, and has come to be recognised as obligatory on the individual mainly because it conduces to the safety of the whole community. The learner was told to conquer his passions for his own sake rather than for the sake of others; and indulgence in violent anger, though more energetically denounced, was, in theory, placed on a par with immoderate delight or uncontrollable distress. So also, vices of impurity were classed with comparatively harmless forms of sensuality, and considered in reference, not to the social degradation of their victims, but to the spiritual defilement of their perpetrators.
