Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/368

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358
FIRST BOOK. CHAPTER XVI.

yet no state of happiness; it is only the patient endurance of sufferings which one has foreseen as irremediable. Yet magnanimity and worth consist in this, that one should bear silently and patiently what is irremediable, in melancholy peace, remaining always the same, while others pass from rejoicing to despair and from despair to rejoicing. Accordingly one may also conceive of Stoicism as a spiritual hygiene, in accordance with which, just as one hardens the body against the influences of wind and weather, against fatigue and exertion, one has also to harden one's mind against misfortune, danger, loss, injustice, malice, perfidy, arrogance, and the folly of men.

I remark further, that the καθγκοντα of the Stoics, which Cicero translates officia, signify as nearly as possible Obliegenheiten, or that which it befits the occasion to do; English, incumbencies; Italian, quel che tocca a me di fare, o di lasciare, thus what it behoves a reasonable man to do. Cf. Diog. Laert., vii. i. 109. Finally, the pantheism of the Stoics, though absolutely inconsistent with many an exhortation of Arrian, is most distinctly expressed by Seneca: "Quid est Deus? Mens universi. Quid est Deus? Quod vides totum, et quod non vides totum. Sic demum magnitudo sua illi redditur, qua nihil majus excogitari potest: si solus est omnia, opus suum et extra et intra tenet." (Quæst. Natur. 1, præfatio 12.)