SENECA. THE STOICS. 257 



vulgar polytheism were resolved into allegories, and treated as 

 treasures of mysterious wisdom. 1 



In considering the moral doctrine of the Stoics, it will be only Morals, 

 necessary to advert to those peculiarities by which they were dis- 

 tinguished from the other philosophical sects of antiquity. In opposi- 

 tion to the Epicureans, instead of resolving reason into instinct, and 

 considering the pursuit of happiness as a quest of pleasure on a more 

 enlarged scale, they proceeded to the other extreme, and maintained 

 that the first impulses of nature are evidences of an inherent and 

 connatural self-love. They argued that the first gleams of desire, as 

 they are directed to things appropriate and conducive to welfare, are 

 scintillations of an innate reason and prudential faculty. Since the 

 natural desire of infants in their earliest moments are directed to 

 things beneficial, and their aversions are calculated to guard them 

 from things that would be injurious, this school stoutly maintained 

 that these particular affections imply a deliberate preference of what 

 is good for the whole nature, and that those movements which have 

 the appearance of senseless organic impulse, are the evolutions of an 

 inherent prudence, and of a native self-love. They argued further, 

 that the seminal principle of self-preservation must be the ground of 

 all original appetite and aversion, and not any pursuit of pleasure as 

 such, or any declination from pain as such ; for that pleasure and pain 

 are merely the result and consequences of certain actions ; now these 

 consequences cannot be anticipated before experience, and therefore 

 cannot originally, in the first instance, be the ground of the actions 

 themselves. In the inanimate creation, where pleasure cannot be 

 felt, there is still some inherent principle which directs the roots of 

 trees to feel their way into appropriate layers of soil or moisture, and 

 their branches to shoot upwards into the congenial atmosphere. In 

 the lower orders of animals, life and health are preserved by some 

 salutiferous influence of the same kind. If in human nature these 

 original motives to action were mere animal propensities to the blind 

 quest of pleasure, nature, which in other instances is so vigilant and 

 conservative, would in the case of man often impel to injury and 

 destruction. So far, therefore, from reason being resolved into blind 

 appetite, what is termed instinct in the earliest impulses of the human 

 frame ought to be exalted into a modification of reason. 



The Stoics further argued, that though utility is a great object of 

 desire, and a great test of the morality of actions, it is not the only 

 consideration which impels to action ; that all knowledge is desirable 

 on its own account, without reference to the practical benefits which it 

 produces ; that the curiosity of children is an indication of a character 

 inseparable from the human mind ; and that, however disguised or 

 counteracted by circumstances, a thirst for information and a yearning 

 after truth are constituent parts of our nature. The gratification of 

 these intellectual longings and aspirations was therefore held by them 



1 Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 24. 

 [G. E. P.] S 



