Note 91 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

(c) Connection between virtue and happiness. The third point in their moral theory of the world, the connection between moral worth and happiness, engaged all the subtlety of Chrysippus and his followers. To deny any connection between them would have been to contradict the ordinary views of the relation of means to ends. Besides, they were prepared to regard some part of the evils of life as divine judgments.91 Still there were facts which could not be reconciled with this view—the misfortunes of the virtuous, the good fortune of the vicious—and these required explanation. The task of explaining them appears to have involved the Stoics in considerable embarrassment, nor were their answers altogether satisfactory.92 The spirit of their system, however, rendered only one explanation possible: no real evil could happen to the virtuous, no real good fortune could fall to the lot of the vicious.93 Apparent misfortune will be regarded by the wise man partly as a natural consequence, partly as a wholesome training for his moral powers;94 there is nothing which is not matter for rational action: everything that happens, when rightly considered, contributes to our good; nothing that is secured by moral depravity is in itself desirable.95 With this view it was possible to connect a belief in divine punishment, by saying that what to a good man is a training of his powers, is a real misfortune and consequently a punishment to a bad man; but we are not in a position to say whether the scattered hints of Chrysippus really bear this meaning.