APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 109 



allow themselves to be beaten by mere facts. " Give 

 me a doctrine and I will find the reasons for it," said 

 Chrysippus. So they perfected, if they did not invent, 

 that ingenious and plausible form of pleading, the 

 Theodicy ; for the purpose of showing firstly, that 

 there is no such thing as evil ; secondly, that if there 

 is, it is the necessary correlate of good ; and, more- 

 over, that it is either due to our own fault, or inflicted 

 for our benefit. 



Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes 

 to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our 

 doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness ; and 

 the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily 

 effaced. 



In the language of the Stoa, ' ' Nature " was a word 

 of many meanings. There was the " Nature " of the 

 cosmos, and the " Nature " of man. In the latter, the 

 animal " nature," which man shares with a moiety of 

 the living part of the cosmos, was distinguished from 

 a higher "nature." Even in this higher nature there 

 were grades of rank. The logical faculty is an 

 instrument which may be turned to account for any 

 purpose. The passions and the emotions are so 

 closely tied to the lower nature that they may be 

 considered to be pathological, rather than normal, 

 phenomena. The one supreme, hegemonic, faculty, 

 which constitutes the essential "nature" of man, is 

 most nearly represented by that which, in the 

 language of a later philosophy, has been called the 

 .pure reason. It is this "nature " which holds up the 



