WERE THE STOICS UTILITAEIANS? 181 



Westniinsfpr Eevipin decidedly prefers to that of utilitarian/'" In 

 this respect it is very significant that the founder of Stocism intro- 

 duced a new word for duty, kathekon, containing a preposition de- 

 noting relation or derivation, and that the last defender of the 

 Portico gives a simihir term, katorlhoscis, for those actions '" which 

 proceed 5}^ the straight path from a kindred principle to the end 

 appointed.""!" 



Cicero,! however, consi.lsrs that the preposition in these terras 

 for right actions, denotes simply their accordance with nature. 



Nature was, indeed, the supreme authority of the Stoics, v/hose 

 favorite precept, "follov/ nature," did not mean '"follow con- 

 science," as Miss Cobbe asserts on pages 142-3 of Intuitive Morals, 

 where she imagines that she proves it b}' a remarkably incomplete 

 quotation from Diogenes Laertius, who m.ikes much more lefer- 

 once. than in her extract, to universal nature, an oracle to which 

 the Epicureans appealed as constantly as their stern rivals, v/ithout 

 ever attempting to receive its revelations intuitively. The philos- 

 ophers of both schools agreed with most of their contemporaries in 

 "acknowledging, as the ultimate source of right and wrong in 

 morals, and therefore in institutions, the imaginary law of the im- 

 aginary being, Nature." (Mill on Comte, p 6o.) And this i'allacy 

 v/as accepted as the ultimate analysis by nearly every moralist who 

 sought any for fifteen centuries after the death of Marcus Aurelius. 

 Indeed, the error still shows itself in the current loose talk about 

 natural rights and desires, unnatural conduct, etc. The fact th'it 

 the Stoics lived in what Mill calls the abstraetional, or ontological, 

 and Gomte the metaphysical period of ethics, should not prevent 

 our recognizing them as iVathful followers of the derivation raetliod 

 according to their light, as is proved by the following quot;itions, 

 some of which even show that their authors were in advance of 

 the age and almost anticipated the discoveries of modern Utilitari- 

 ans, while other passages indicate a habit of estimating the moral- 

 ity of an action according to its tendencies and usefulness. 



'■ In order to distinguish good from evil you should consider not 

 Avhence it comes, but v/hither it tends. 



'' Whatever makes life happy is good hy its own right and can- 

 not become evil." (Seneca. Cp.41-.ppction 6.) "Onlv thnt which mnkes 



•^ dee I he aiticlb on tlie Natiinil HLstury d Moriils. puuiirihed October, 166d, in 

 Vol. XCir, p. 237, 52. Am. Ed. 



t See Diogenes Liertius, Zen;> LXTI, p. 293, and Marcus Aurelius, V. 14. 



XKaia 2}hysin. See De Finibus, III, 14. 



