CHAPTER I.

THE STOICS pages 1-52

I. Why the systems of Plato and Aristotle failed to secure a hold on contemporary thought, 1—Fate of the schools which they founded, 2—Revival of earlier philosophies and especially of naturalism, 3—Antisthenes and the Cynics, 4—Restoration of naturalism to its former dignity, 6.

II. Zeno and Crates, 7—Establishment of the Stoic school, 8—Cleanthes and Chrysippus, 9—Encyclopaedic character of the Stoic teaching, 9—The great place which it gave to physical science, 10—Heracleitean reaction against the dualism of Aristotle, 11—Determinism and materialism of the Stoics, 12—Their concessions to the popular religion, 14.

III. The Stoic theory of cognition purely empirical, 15—Development of formal logic, 16—New importance attributed to judgment as distinguished from conception, 16—The idea of law, 17—Consistency as the principle of the Stoic ethics, 18—Meaning of the precept, Follow Nature, 19—Distinction between pleasure and self-interest as moral standards, 20—Absolute sufficiency of virtue for happiness, 21—The Stoics wrong from an individual, right from a social point of view, 22—Theory of the passions, 23—Necessity of volition and freedom of judgment, 24—Difficulties involved in an appeal to purpose in creation, 24.

IV. The Stoic paradoxes follow logically from the absolute distinction between right and wrong, 25—Attempt at a compromise with the ordinary morality by the doctrines (i.) of preference and objection, 26—(ii.) of permissible feeling, 27—(iii.) of progress from folly to wisdom, 27—and (iv.) of imperfect duties, 27—Cicero’s _De Officiis_, 28—Examples of Stoic casuistry, 29—Justification of suicide, 30.

V. Three great contributions made by the Stoics to ethical speculation, (i.) The inwardness of virtue, including the notion of conscience, 31—Prevalent misconception with regard to the Erinyes, 32—(ii.) The individualisation of duty, 33—Process by which this idea was evolved, 35—Its influence on the Romans of the empire, 36—(iii.) The idea of humanity, 36—Its connexion with the idea of Nature, 37—Utilitarianism of the Stoics, 38.

VI. The philanthropic tendencies of Stoicism partly neutralised by its extreme individualism, 40—Conservatism of Marcus Aurelius, 41—The Stoics at once unpitying and forgiving, 42—Humility produced by their doctrine of universal depravity, 42—It is not in the power of others to injure us, 43—The Stoic satirists and Roman society, 44.

VII. The idea of Nature and the unity of mankind, 44—The dynamism of Heracleitus dissociated from the teleology of Socrates, 46—Standpoint of Marcus Aurelius, 46—Tendency to extricate morality from its external support, 47—Modern attacks on Nature, 48—Evolution as an ethical sanction, 49—The vicious circle of evolutionist ethics, 50—The idea of humanity created and maintained by the idea of a cosmos, 51—The prayer of Cleanthes, 52.