19i wisco]srsi:N" academy sciejs'ces, arts, and letters. 



success so peculiar as scarcely to be compatible with serious def'^'cts 

 in theory. But these heroes became martyrs so commonly, and 

 uniformly straggled against tyranny and profligacy with such self- 

 denial and selt-devotion, as necessarily gave the Stoics a peculiar 

 tendency to asceticism, which, indeed, never hindered their being 

 studious, patriotic and philanthropic beyond comparison, but which 

 often prevented them from weighing the worth of pleasure v/ith 

 scientific accuracy. 



Of these struggles and martyrdoms, Mr. Lecky has given us so 

 beautiful, and, despite mistakes, like calling Brutus a Stoic, so val- 

 uable a narrative in his History of European Morals, that it is all 

 the more remarkable that he did not see how completely he has 

 answered his own arguments against the value of utilitarianism, 

 which fill a large part of his first volume, by showing, in the re- 

 mainder of it, what a noble work was done by the obnoxious 

 theory, in the ethical elevation and influence of the most zealous 

 of its ancient advocates. Failure to see the resemblance of stoic- 

 ism to utilitarianism is, however, to be expected from a writer who 

 so far ignored the position of Mill, Bain, and Spencer, as to call 

 the system, of which they were the leading expositors, selfish. 

 And this failure was much more excusable in works written, like 

 Miss Cobbe's essay on Intuitive Morals, before the broad school of 

 happiness moralists had gained its present prominence. How early 

 in life J. S. Mill accepted Epicurus as the first utilitarian in pre- 

 ference even to Aristotle, we need not inquire, nor how far this 

 view was imbibed from Jeremy Bentham. 



The common misunderstanding of the true relationship of the 

 Stoics has been much promoted, among other causes, by the fact 

 that, like other ancient philosophers, they paid such regard to what 

 they called Nature, as to satisfy themselves with appealing to her 

 fancied authority instead of pushing derivative analysis to the last 

 results. Evidence has, however, already been ofl'ered to prove that 

 in following Nature the Stoics not only conformed to the principal 

 precepts of the most enlightened Utilitarians, but even used their 

 method, so far as to call only useful qualities and actions natural, 

 a term by which, indeed, they meant little more than that the origin 

 of the claims of utility was a sacred mysterj". Indeed, modern 

 science has been obliged to exert all her powers in order to solve 

 this mystery so far as to show that the enlargement and ennoble- 



