56 NOTES 



wa.s a, philosophy of men, who having cast off all illusions, and 

 the childishness of despair among them, were minded to en- 

 dure in patience whatever conditions the cosmic process might 

 create, so long as those conditions were compatible with the 

 progress towards virtue, which alone, for them, conferred a worthy 

 object on existence. There is no note of despair in the stoical 

 declaration that the perfected ' wise man ' is the equal of Zeus in 

 everything but the duration of his existence. And, in my judg- 

 ment there is as little pride about it often as it serves for the 

 text of discourses on stoical arrogance. Grant the stoical 

 postulate that there is no good except virtue ; grant that the 

 perfected wise man is altogether virtuous, in consequence of 

 being guided in all things by the reason, which is an effluence of 

 Zeus and there seems no escape from the stoical conclusion. 



Note 17 (p. 28). 



Our ' Apathy ' carries such a different set of connotations from 

 its Greek original that I have ventured on using the latter as a 

 technical term. 



Note 18 (p. 29). 



Many of the stoical philosophers recommended their disciples 

 to take an active share in public affairs ; and in the Roman world, 

 for several centuries, the best public men were strongly inclined to 

 Stoicism. Nevertheless, the logical tendency of Stoicism seems to 

 me to be fulfilled only in such men as Diogenes and Epictetus. 



Note 19 (p. 33). 



Of course, strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process 

 in virtue of which it advances towards perfection, are part and 

 parcel of the general process of evolution, just as the gregarious 

 habit of innumerable plants and animals, which has been of immense 

 advantage to them, is so. A hive of bees is an organic polity, a 

 society in which the part played by each member is determined 

 by organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones, are, so to 

 speak, castes, divided from one another by marked physical 

 barriers. Among birds and mammals, societies are formed, of 



