Note 115 — Chapter XII · APPLIED MORAL SCIENCE.

(1) Submission to the course of nature. Firmly as the principles of the Stoic ethics insist upon moral conduct, those ethics, judged by their whole tone, cannot rest short of requiring an absolute resignation to the course of the universe. This requirement is based quite as much upon the historical surroundings of their system as upon its intellectual principles. How, in an age in which political freedom was crushed by the oppression of the Macedonian and subsequently of the Roman dominion, and the Roman dominion was itself smothered under the despotism of imperialism, in which Might, like a living fate, crushed every attempt at independent action—how, in such an age, could those aiming at higher objects than mere personal gratification have any alternative but to resign themselves placidly to the course of circumstances which individuals and nations were alike powerless to control? In making a dogma of fatalism, Stoicism was only following the current of the age. At the same time, as will be seen from what has been said, it was only following the necessary consequences of its own principles. All that is individual in the world being only the result of a general connection of cause and effect—only a carrying out of a universal law—what remains possible, in the face of this absolute necessity, but to yield unconditionally? How can yielding be called a sacrifice, when the law to which we yield is nothing less than the expression of reason? Hence resignation to the world’s course was a point chiefly insisted upon in the Stoic doctrine of morality. The verses of Cleanthes,115 in which he submits without reserve to the leading of destiny, are a theme repeatedly worked out by the writers of this School. The virtuous man, they say, will honour God by resigning his will to the divine will; the divine will he will think better than his own will; he will remember that under all circumstances we must follow destiny, but that it is the wise man’s prerogative to follow of his own accord; that there is only one way to happiness and independence—that of willing nothing except what is in the nature of things, and what will realise itself independently of our will.116