of the reality of apparent evils. They were all either forms of good, or incidental to its operation or essential to its production. This was the common solution of the Stoics. It had many phases. One view was based upon the teleological conception of nature. The world is marching on to its end: it realizes its purpose not directly but by degrees: there are necessary sequences of its march which seem to us to be evil.1 Another view, akin to the preceding, was based upon the conception of the world as a whole. In its vast economy there are subordinations and individual inconveniences. Such subordinations and inconveniences are necessary parts of the plan. The pain of the individual is not an evil, but his contribution to the good of the whole. "What about my leg being lamed, then?" says Epictetus,2 addressing himself in the character of an imaginary objector. "Slave! do you really find fault with the world on account of one bit of a leg? will you not give that up to the universe? will you not let it go? will you not gladly surrender it to the Giver?" The world, in other words, was regarded as an economy (oikovouía), like that of a city, in which there are apparent inequalities of condition, but in which

1 This is one of the solutions offered by Chrysippus: the concrete form of the difficulty, with which he dealt, was εἰ αἱ τῶν ἀνθρώπων νόσοι κατὰ φύσιν γίνονται, and his answer was that diseases come κατὰ παρaкoλoúðŋσiv, ‘non per naturam sed per sequellas quasdam necessarias,' Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 1. 9. So also in the long fragment of Philo in Euseb. Ρrα. Ευ. 8. 13 (Philo, ii. 643, 644), θεὸς γὰρ οὐδενὸς αἴτιος κακοῦ τὸ παράπαν ἀλλ ̓ αἱ τῶν στοιχείων μεταβολαὶ ταῦτα γεννῶσιν, οὐ προηγού μενα ἔργα φύσεως ἀλλ ̓ ἑπόμενα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις καὶ τοῖς προηγουμένοις ἐπακολουθοῦντα.

2 Diss. 1. 12. 24.

such inequalities are necessary to the constitution of the whole.1

"What is meant, then," asks Epictetus, "by distinguishing the things that happen to us as 'according to nature' and 'contrary to nature'? The phrases are used as if we were isolated. For example, to a foot to be 'according to nature' is to be clean; but if you consider it as a foot, a member of the body, and not as isolated, it will be its duty both to walk in mud, and to tread on thorns-nay, sometimes even to be cut off for the benefit of the whole body; if it refuse, it is no longer a foot. We have to form a similar conception about ourselves. What are you? A man. If you regard yourself as isolated, it is according to nature' to live until old age, to be rich, to be in good health; but if you regard yourself as a man, a part of a certain whole, it is your duty, on account of that whole, sometimes to be ill, sometimes to take a voyage, sometimes to run into danger, sometimes to be in want, and, it may be, to die before your time. Why then are you discontented? Do you not know that, as in the example a discontented foot is no longer a foot, so neither are you a man. For what is a man? A member of a city, first the city which consists of gods and men, and next of the city which is so called in the more proximate sense, the earthly city, which is a small model of the whole. Am I, then, now,' you say, 'to be brought before a court is so-and-so to fall into a fever: so-and-so to go on a voyage: so-and-so to die: so-and-so to be condemned?' Yes; for it is impossible, considering the sort of body we have, with this atmosphere round us, and with these companions of our life, that different things of this kind should not befall different men.2

"It is on this account that the philosophers rightly tell us that if a perfectly good man had foreknown what was going to happen to him, he would co-operate with nature in both falling

1 Chrysippus, de Diis, 2, ap. Plut. de Stoic. repug. 35, потè μèv tà δύσχρηστα συμβαίνει τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς οὐχ ὥσπερ τοῖς φαύλοις κολάσεως χάριν ἀλλὰ κατ ̓ ἄλλην οἰκονομίαν ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν.

2 Diss. 2. 5. 24.

sick and dying and being maimed, being conscious that this is the particular portion that is assigned to him in the arrangement of the universe, and that the whole is supreme over the part, and the city over the citizen."1

This Stoical solution, if the teleological conception which /underlies it be assumed, may have been adequate as an explanation both of physical pain and of social inequality. But it was clearly inadequate as an explanation of misery and moral evil. And the sense of misery and moral evil was growing. The increased complexity of social life revealed the distress which it helped to create, and the intensified consciousness of individual life quickened also the sense of disappointment and moral shortcoming. The solution of the difficulties which these facts of life presented, was found in a belief which was correlative to the growing belief in the goodness of God, though logically inconsistent with the belief in the universality of His Providence. It was, that men were the authors of their own misery. Their sorrows, so far as they were not punitive or remedial, came from their own folly or perversity. They belonged to a margin of life which was outside the will of the gods or the ordinances of fate. The belief was repeatedly expressed by Homer, but does not appear in philosophy until the time of the Stoics: it is found in both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and the latter also quotes it as a belief of the Pythagoreans.2 Out of it came the solution of a problem not less important than that from which it had itself sprung. The conception that men were free to bring ruin upon themselves, led to the wider conception that they were altogether free. ♣ Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 2. 12—15.

1 Diss. 2. 10. 5.

There emerged for the first time into prominence the idea which has filled a large place in all later theology and ethics, that of the freedom of the will. The freedom. which was denied to external nature was asserted of human nature. It was within a man's own power to do right or wrong, to be happy or miserable.

"Of all things that are," says Epictetus,1 "one part is in our control, the other out of it; in our control are opinion, impulse to do, effort to obtain, effort to avoid-in a word, our own proper activities; out of our control are our bodies, property, reputation, office-in a word, all things except our proper activities. Things in our control are in their nature free, not liable to hindrance in the doing or to frustration of the attainment; things out of our control are weak, dependent, liable to hindrance, belonging to others. Bear in mind, then, that if you mistake what is dependent for what is free, and what belongs to others for what is your own, you will meet with obstacles in your way, you will be regretful and disquieted, you will find fault with both gods and men. If, on the contrary, you think that only to be your own which is really your own, and that which is another's to be, as it really is, another's, no one will thwart you, you will find fault with no one, you will reproach no one, you will do no single thing against your will, no one will harm you, you will not have an enemy."

The incompatibility of this doctrine with that of the universality of Destiny or Reason or Providence-the "antinomy of the practical understanding"-was not always observed.2 The two doctrines marched on parallel lines, and each of them was sometimes stated as though it had no limitations. The harmony of them, which is indicated by both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and which underlies a large part of both the theology and the ethics

Ench. 1.

१ E.g. Sext. Empir. Pyrr. 3. 9.

of Epictetus, is in effect this: The world marches on to its end, realizing its own perfection, with absolute certainty. The majority of its parts move in that march unconsciously, with no sense of pleasure or pain, no idea of good or evil. To man is given the consciousness of action, the sense of pleasure and pain, the idea of good and evil, and freedom of choice between them. If he chooses that which is against the movement of nature, he chooses for himself misery; if he chooses that which is in accordance with that movement, he finds happiness. In either case the movement of nature goes on, and the man fulfils his destiny: "Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt." It is a man's true function and high privilege so to educate his mind and discipline his will, as to think that to be best which is really best, and that to be avoided which nature has not willed: in other words, to acquiesce in the will of God, not as submitting in passive resignation to the power of one who is stronger, but as having made that will his own.2

If a man realizes this, instead of bemoaning the difficulties of life, he will not only ask God to send them, but thank Him for them. This is the Stoical theodicy. The life and teaching of Epictetus are for the most part a commentary upon it.

1 Seneca, Ep. 107. 11: a free Latin rendering of one of the verses of Cleanthes quoted from Epictetus in Lecture VI. p. 157.

2 Seneca, Dial. 1. 5. 8: quid est boni viri? præbere se fato. grande solatium est cum universo rapi. quicquid est quod nos sic vivere, sic mori jussit, eadem necessitate et deos adligat. in revoca bilis humana pariter ac divina cursus vehit. ille ipse omnium conditor et rector scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur. semper paret, semel jussit.