Part 2 — CHAPTER XII. APPLIED MORAL SCIENCE.

Taking the most unprejudiced view of the Stoic propositions, there are enough of them to arouse extreme dislike, even if they could, without difficulty, be deduced from the fundamental principles of the system. A moral theory which draws such a sharp distinction between what is without and what is within, that it regards the latter as alone essential, the former as altogether indifferent, which attaches no value to anything except virtuous intention, and places the highest value in being independent of everything—such a moral theory must of necessity prove wanting, whenever the business of morality consists in using the senses as instruments for expressing the mind, and in raising natural impulses to the sphere of free will. If its prominent features allow less to the senses than naturally belongs to them, there is a danger that, in particular cases in which intentions are not so obvious, the moral importance of actions will often be ignored, and such actions treated as indifferent.

B. Social relations. The same observation will have to be made with regard to the positions which the Stoics laid down in reference to social relations. Not that it was their intention to detach man from his natural relation (1) Origin and use of society. to other men. On the contrary, they hold that the further man carries the work of moral improvement (a) Origin of social claims. in himself, the stronger he will feel drawn to society. But by the introduction of the idea of society, opposite tendencies arise in their ethics—one towards individual independence, the other in the direction of a well-ordered social life. The former tendency is the earlier one, and continues to predominate throughout; still, the latter was not surreptitiously introduced—nay, more, it was the logical result of the Stoic principles, and to the eye of an Epicurean must have seemed a distinctive feature of Stoicism. In attributing absolute value only to rational thought and will, Stoicism had declared man to be independent of anything external, and, consequently, of his fellow-men. But since this value only attaches to rational thought and intention, the freedom of the individual also involves the recognition of the community, and brings with it the requirement that everyone must subordinate his own wishes to the wishes and needs of others. Rational conduct and thought can only then exist when the conduct of the individual is in harmony with general law. General law is the same for all rational beings. All rational beings must therefore aim at the same end, and recognise themselves subject to the same law. All must feel themselves portions of one connected whole. Man must not live for himself, but for society.

But, as yet, the moral problem is not exhausted. C. Man and the course of the world. Reason, the same as man’s, rules pure and complete in the universe; and if it is the business of man to give play to reason in his own conduct, and to recognise it in that of others, it is also his duty to subordinate himself to collective reason, and to the course of the world, over which it presides. In conclusion, therefore, the relation of man to the course of the world must be considered.

A very different question, however, it is, whether life can be treated in this way as something indifferent, and whether it is consistent with an unconditional resignation to the course of the world, to evade by personal interposition what destiny with its unalterable laws has decreed for us. Stoicism may, indeed, allow this course of action. But in so doing does it not betray its ill-success in the attempt to combine, without contradiction, two main tendencies so different as that of individual independence and that of submission to the universe?