Note 172 — Chapter X · ETHICS. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE STOIC ETHICS. ABSTRACT THEORY OF MORALITY.

No doubt the age in which Seneca lived afforded ample occasion for such effusions, but his predecessors must have found similar occasions in their own days. Indeed, all the principles of the Stoic School, when consistently developed, made it impossible to consider the great majority of men as anything else than a mass of fools and sinners. From this sweeping verdict, even the most distinguished names were not excluded. If asked for examples of wisdom, they would point to Socrates, Diogenes, Antisthenes,172 and, in later times, to Cato;173 but not only would they deny philosophic virtue, as Plato had done before them, to the greatest statesmen and heroes of early times, but they would deny to them all and every kind of virtue.174 Even the admission that general faults belong to some in a lower degree than to others can hardly be reconciled with their principle of the equality of all who are not wise.175