Note 107 — Chapter XIII · THE RELATION OF THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY TO RELIGION.

C. Prophetic powers. The Stoic theology has engaged a good deal of our attention, not only because it is instructive to compare their views, in general and in detail, with similar views advanced nowadays, but also because it forms a very characteristic and important part of their entire system. To us, much of it appears to be a mere worthless trifling; but, to the Stoics, these explanations were solemnly earnest. To them they seemed to be the only means of rescuing the people’s faith, of meeting the severe charges brought against tradition and the works of the poets, on which a Greek had been fed from infancy.107 Unable to break entirely with these traditions, they still would not sacrifice to them their scientific and moral convictions. Can we, then, wonder that they attempted the impossible, and sought to unite contradictions? or that such an attempt landed them in forced and artificial methods of interpretation?