It must be capable of influencing natures that can
never rise to an heroic level. It must tincture, modify, and mitigate
where it cannot eradicate or transform. In Christianity there are always
a few persons seeking by continual and painful efforts to reverse or
extinguish the ordinary feelings of humanity, but in the great majority
of cases the influence of the religious principle upon the mind, though
very real, is not of a nature to cause any serious strain or struggle.
It is displayed in a certain acquired spontaneity of impulse. It softens
the character, purifies and directs the imagination, blends insensibly
with the habitual modes of thought, and, without revolutionising, gives
a tone and bias to all the forms of action. But stoicism was simply a
school of heroes. It recognised no gradations of virtue or vice. It
condemned all emotions, all spontaneity, all mingled motives, all the
principles, feelings, and impulses upon which the virtue of common men
mainly depends. It was capable of acting only on moral natures that were
strung to the highest tension, and it was therefore naturally rejected
by the multitude.
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