Note 148 — Chapter XIII · THE RELATION OF THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY TO RELIGION.

In all these questions the moral character of Stoic piety is ever to the fore, and great pains were taken by the Stoics to bring their belief in prophecy into harmony with their philosophic view of the world. Nevertheless, it is clear that success could not be theirs either in making this attempt, or indeed in dealing with any other parts of the popular belief. Struggling with indefatigable zeal in an attempt so hopeless, they proved at least the sincerity of their wish to reconcile religion and philosophy; but they also disclosed by these endeavours a misgiving that science, which had put on so bold a face, was not in itself sufficient, but needed support from the traditions of religion, and from a belief in divine revelations.148 Probably we shall not be far wrong in referring to this practical need the seeming vagaries of men like Chrysippus, who, with the clearest intellectual powers, could be blind to the folly of the methods they adopted in defending untenable and antiquated opinions. These vagaries show in Stoicism practical interests preponderating over science. They also establish the connection of Stoicism with Schools which doubted altogether the truth of the understanding, and thought to supplement it by divine revelations. Thus the Stoic theory of divination leads directly to the Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic doctrine of revelation.