It will be seen that the Stoics condemned passion not as the cause of immoral actions but as intrinsically vicious in itself. Hence their censure extended to the rapturous delight and passionate grief which seem entirely out of relation to conduct properly so called. This was equivalent to saying that the will has complete control over emotion; a doctrine which our philosophers did not shrink from maintaining. It24 might have been supposed that a position which the most extreme supporters of free-will would hardly accept, would find still less favour with an avowedly necessarian school. And to regard the emotions as either themselves beliefs, or as inevitably caused by beliefs, would seem to remove them even farther from the sphere of moral responsibility. The Stoics, however, having arrived at the perfectly true doctrine that judgment is a form of volition, seem to have immediately invested it as such with the old associations of free choice which they were at the same time busily engaged in stripping off from other exercises of the same faculty. They took up the Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge; but they would not agree with Socrates that it could be instilled by force of argument. To them vice was not so much ignorance as the obstinate refusal to be convinced.54"No, I've none to sell."That same afternoon also I made the acquaintance of the editor of a local weekly, De Bilsenaar, which was not allowed to appear during the occupation of the place by the Germans. He and others had a great many things to tell me.
"All right, darling," Hetty whispered. "Lie down and be quiet, and I will see what I can do for you. I shan't be long.""You don't play," she said. "What interest is there to you?"Mr. van Wersch denied this of course, but nevertheless they took him to Bilsen in the motor-car. There he was searched once more, the Netherland letters he had with him were taken away, as also 1,800 francs. But when he was released they gave him back the money.
