76 EVOLUTION AXD ETHICS II 



that the cosmos works through the lower nature 

 of man, not for righteousness, but against it. And 

 it finally drove them to confess that the existence 

 of their ideal " wise man " was incompatible with 

 the nature of things ; that even a passable approxi- 

 mation to that ideal was to be attained only at the 

 cost of renunciation of the world and mortification, 

 not merely of the flesh, but of all human affec- 

 tions. The state of perfection was that ' apa- 

 theia ' ^^ in which desire, though it may still be 

 felt, is powerless to move the will, reduced to the 

 sole function of executing the commands of pure 

 reason. Even this residuum of activity was to be 

 regarded as a temporary loan, as an efflux of the 

 divine world-pervading spirit, chafing at its im- 

 prisonment in the flesh, until such time as death 

 enabled it to return to its source in the all- 

 pervading logos. 



I find it difficult to discover any very gi'eat 

 difference between Apatheia and Nirvana, except 

 that stoical speculation agi^ees with pre-Buddhistic 

 philosophy, rather than with the teachings of 

 Gautama, in so fjir as it postulates a perma- 

 nent substance equivalent to ' Brahma ' and 

 'Atman'; and that, in stoical practice, the 

 adoption of the life of the mendicant cynic was 

 held to be more a counsel of perfection than an 

 indispensable condition of the higher life. 



Thus the extremes touch. Greek thought and 



