As
philanthropists, the Stoics, through their passion for unity, were led
to the extirpation of those emotions which nature intended as the chief
springs of benevolence. As speculative philosophers, they were entangled
by the same desire in a long train of pitiable paradoxes. Their famous
doctrines that all virtues are equal, or, more correctly, are the same,
that all vices are equal, that nothing is an evil which does not affect
our will, and that pain and bereavement are, in consequence, no ills,
though partially explained away and frequently disregarded by the Roman
Stoics, were yet sufficiently prominent to give their teaching something
of an unnatural and affected appearance. Prizing only a single object,
and developing only a single side of their nature, their minds became
narrow and their views contracted. Thus, while the Epicureans, urging
men to study nature in order to banish superstition, endeavoured to
correct the ignorance of physical science which was one of the chief
impediments to the progress of the ancient mind, the Stoics for the most
part disdained a study which was other than the pursuit of virtue.
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