" "To ask to be paid
for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the
feet for walking." In doing good, man "should be like the vine which has
produced grapes, and asks for nothing more after it has produced its
proper fruit." His end, according to these teachers, is not to find
peace either in life or in death. It is to do his duty, and to tell the
truth.
The second distinguishing feature of stoicism I have noticed was the
complete suppression of the affections to make way for the absolute
ascendency of reason. There are two great divisions of character
corresponding very nearly to the stoical and epicurean temperaments I
have described--that in which the will predominates, and that in which
the desires are supreme. A good man of the first class is one whose
will, directed by a sense of duty, pursues the course he believes to be
right, in spite of strong temptations to pursue an opposite course,
arising either from his own passions and tendencies, or from the
circumstances that surround him. A good man of the second class is one
who is so happily constituted that his sympathies and desires
instinctively tend to virtuous ends.
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