Note 74 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

The other line of argument is followed not so much in individual expressions. But owing no doubt to the pre-eminently practical character of its treatment of things, the Stoic view of nature, like the Socratic, has ever an eye on the adaptation of means to ends in the world. As, on the one hand, this adaptation of means to ends is the most convincing proof of the existence of deity, so, on the other hand, by it, more than by anything else, the divine government of the world makes itself manifest.74 Like Socrates, however, they took a very superficial view of the adaptation of means to ends, arguing that everything in the world was created for the benefit of some other thing—plants for the support of animals, animals for the support and the service of man,75 the world for the benefit of Gods and men76—not unfrequently degenerating into the ridiculous and pedantic, in their endeavours to trace the special end for which each thing exists.77 But, in asking the further question, For what purpose do Gods and men exist? they could not help being at length carried beyond the idea of a relative end to the idea of an end-in-itself. The end for which Gods and men exist is that of mutual society.78 Or, expressing the same idea in language more philosophical, the end of man is the contemplation and imitation of the world; man has only importance as being a part of a whole; only this whole is perfect and an end-in-itself.79