This "right reason," or "common reason," is the source and criterion of all truth; "for our individual natures are all parts of the universal nature," and, therefore, all the dictates of "common reason" are "identical with that right reason which pervades every thing, being the same with Jupiter, who is the regulator and chief manager of all things."
The fundamental canon of the logic of the Stoics, therefore, was that "what appears to all, that is to be believed, for it is apprehended by the reason, which is common and Divine."
It is needless to remark that the Stoics were compelled by their physiological theory to deny the proper immortality of the soul. Some of them seem to have supposed that it might, for a season, survive the death of the body, but its ultimate destination was absorption into the Divine essence. It must return to its original source.
ETHICS.
If reason be the great organizing and controlling law of the universe, then, to live conformable to reason is the great practical law of life. Accordingly, the fundamental ethical maxim of the Stoics is, "Live conformably with nature--that is, with reason, or the will of the universal governor and manager of all things." [841] Thus the chief good (εὐδαιµονία) is the conformity of man's actions to reason--that is, to the will of God, "for nothing is well done without a reference to God." [842]
[Footnote 841: ][ (return) ] Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.
[Footnote 842: ][ (return) ] Marcus Aurelius, bk. iii. § II.
It is obvious that this doctrine must lead to a social morality and a jurisprudence the very opposite of the Epicurean. If we must do that which is good--that is, that which is reasonable, regardless of all consequences, then it is not for the pleasurable or useful results which flow from it that justice should be practised, but because of its intrinsic excellence. Justice is constituted good, not by the law of man, but by the law of God. The highest pleasure is to do right; "this very thing is the virtue of the happy man, and the perfect happiness of life, when every thing is done according to a harmony of the genius of each individual to the will of the Universal Governor and Manager of all things." [843] Every thing which interferes with a purely rational existence is to be eschewed; the pleasures and pains of the body are to be despised. To triumph over emotion, over suffering, over passion; to give the fullest ascendency to reason; to attain courage, moral energy, magnanimity, constancy, was to realize true manhood, nay, "to be godlike; for they have something in them which is, as it were, a god" [844]
The sublime heroism of the Stoic school is well expressed in the manly precept, "Ἀνεχοῦ"--sustine--endure. "Endure the sorrows engendered by the bitter struggle between the passions support all the evils which fortune shall send thee--calumny, betrayal, poverty, exile, irons, death itself." In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius this spirit seems to rise almost to the grandeur of Christian resignation. "Dare to lift up thine eyes to God and say, 'Use me hereafter to whatsoever thou pleasest. I agree, and am of the same mind with thee, indifferent to all things. Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me act what part thou wilt, either of a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.'" [845] "Show those qualities," says Marcus Aurelius, "which God hath put in thy power--sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity." [846]
[Footnote 843: ][ (return) ] Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.