[79] Plutarch, De Alex. Virt., I., vi.; Diog., VII., 33.
[80] It need hardly be observed that here also the morality of natural law has attained its highest artistic development under the hand of George Eliot—sometimes even to the neglect of purely artistic effect, as in Daniel Deronda and the Spanish Gypsy.
[81] Zeller, p. 297, followed by Mr. Capes, in his excellent little work on Stoicism (p. 51).
[82] Seneca, De Irâ, I., v., 2 ff.; II., xxxi., 7; De Clem., I., iii., 2; De Benef., IV., xxvi., I, Epp., xcv., 51 ff.; Epictêtus, Diss., IV., v., 10; Antoninus, VII., 13; together with the additional references given by Zeller, p. 286 ff. It is to be observed that the mutual love attributed to human beings by the Stoic philosophers stands, not for an empirical characteristic, but for an unrealised idea of human nature. The actual feelings of men towards one another are described by Seneca in language recalling that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi. ‘Erras,’ he exclaims, ‘si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis: hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum: nisi quod illarum perniciosior est primus incursus. Nunquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas inicit: aut fame aut timore coguntur ad pugnam: homini perdere hominem libet.’—Epp., ciii., 2.
[83] Plato, Protagoras, 337, D.
[84] ‘He [Charles Austin] presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to any one’s preconceived feelings.’—Mill’s Autobiography, p. 78.
[85] Zeller, p. 281.
[86] ‘Homo sacra res homini jam per lusum et jocum occiditur ... satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.’—Seneca, Epp., xcv., 33. ‘Servi sunt? Immo homines. Servi sunt? Immo contubernales. Servi sunt? Immo humiles amici. Servi sunt? Immo conservi.’—Ibid., xlvii., 1. Compare the treatise De Irâ, passim.
[87] Seneca once lets falls the words, ‘fortuna aequo jure genitos alium alii donavit.’—Consol. ad Marciam, xx, 2; but this is the only expression of the kind that we have been able to discover in a Stoic writer of the empire.
[88] Seneca, Epp., lxxx.