centuries later; and there really seems no need to seek for the causes of this dark view of life in the circumstances of the time of Alexander's successors or of the early Emperors of Rome. To the man with an ethical ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem full of evil.
Note 14 (p. 25).
I use the well-known phrase, but decline responsibility for the libel upon Epicurus, whose doctrines were far less compatible with existence in a stye than those of the Cynics. If it were steadily borne in mind that the conception of the 'flesh' as the source of evil, and that the great saying 'Initium est salutis notitia peccati,' are the property of Epicurus, fewer illusions about Epicureanism would pass muster for accepted truth.
Note 15 (p. 27).
The Stoics said that man was a ζῷον λογικὸν πολιτκὸν φιλάλληλον, or a rational, a political, and an altruistic, or philanthropic animal. In their view, his higher nature tended to develope in these three directions as a plant tends to grow up into its typical form. Since, without the introduction of any consideration of pleasure or pain, whatever thwarted the realization of its type by the plant might be said to be bad, and whatever helped it good; so virtue, in the Stoical sense, as the conduct which tended to the attainment of the rational, political, and philanthropic ideal, was good in itself, and irrespectively of its emotional concomitants.
Man is an "animal sociale communi bono genitum." The safety of society depends upon practical recognition of the fact. "Salva autem esse societas nisi custodia et amore partium non possit," says Seneca. (De. Ira. ii. 31.)
Note 16 (p. 27).
The importance of the physical doctrine of the Stoics, lies in its clear recognition of the universality of the law of causation, with its corollary, the order of nature: the exact form of that order is an altogether secondary consideration.
