a NOTES. 113 



evidence which it supplies of the numerous similari- 

 ties 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 espe- 

 cially stoical learning (Chrysippus himself was a na- 

 tive of the adjacent town of Soli), there is no diffi- 

 culty in understanding the origin of these resem- 

 blances. 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 sto- 

 ical character of Bishop Butler's ethics), the con- 

 cluding pages of Dr. Weygoldt's instructive little 

 work Die Philosophie der Stoa, and Aubertin's Se- 

 neque et Saint Paul. 



It is surprising that a writer of Dr. Lightfoot'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 child- 

 ishness 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 judgment, there is as little 

 pride about it, often as it serves for the text of dis- 

 courses on stoical arrogance. Grant the stoical pos- 

 tulate that there is no good except virtue ; grant that 

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