II NOTES 113 



evidence which it supplies of the numerous similarities 

 of thought between Seneca and the writer of the 

 Pauline epistles. When it is remembered that the 

 writer of the Acts puts a quotation from Aratus, or 

 Cleanthes, into the mouth of the apostle ; and that 

 Tarsus was a great seat of philosophical and especially 

 stoical learning (Chrysippus himself was a native of 

 the adjacent town of Soli), there is no difficulty in 

 understanding the origin of these resemblances. See, 

 on this subject, Sir Alexander Grant's dissertation 

 in his edition of The Ethics of Aristotle (where 

 there is an interesting reference to the stoical 

 character of Bishop Butler's ethics), the concluding 

 pages of Dr. Weygoldt's instructive little work Die 

 Philosophic der Stoa, and Aubertin's Seneque et Saint 

 Paul. 



It is surprising that a writer of Dr. Light foot's 

 stamp should speak of Stoicism as a philosophy of 

 ' despair.' Surely, rather, it was a philosophy of 

 men who, having cast off all illusions, and the childish- 

 ness of despair among them, were minded to endure 

 in patience whatever conditions the cosmic process 

 might create, so long as those conditions were com- 

 patible 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 judgment, 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 per- 



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