The Stoics.—It is, however, in the Stoics that we find the conception of inner reflection reaching clearest expression. Seneca and Epictetus repeat again and again the thought that the conscience is of higher importance than any external judgment,—that its judgment is inevitable. In these various conceptions, we see attained the third stage of Adam Smith's description of the formation of conscience.[83] Man who read his duty at first in the judgments of his fellows, in the customs and laws and codes of honor, and in the religious precepts of the gods, has again come to find in gods and laws, in custom and authority, the true rational law of life; but it is now a law of self. Not a particular or individual self, but a self which embraces within it at once the human and the divine. The individual has become social and has recognized himself as such. The religious, social, and political judgments have become the judgments of man upon himself. "Duty," what is binding or necessary, takes its place as a definite moral conception.
LITERATURE
Besides the writings of Plato (especially, the Apology, Crito, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Republic), Xenophon (Memorabilia), Aristotle (Ethics, Politics), Cicero (On Ends, Laws, Duties; On the Nature of the Gods), Epictetus, Seneca, M. Aurelius, Plutarch, and the fragments of various Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes (especially the Clouds) afford valuable material.
All the histories of philosophy treat the theoretical side; among them may be mentioned Gompérz (Greek Thinkers, 1900-05), Zeller (Socrates; Plato; Aristotle; Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics), Windelband, Benn (Philosophy of Greece, 1898, chs. i., v.).
On the Moral Consciousness: Schmidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, 1882. On the social conditions and theories: Pöhlmann, Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und Sozialismus, 1893-1901; Döring, Die Lehre des Sokrates als sociales Reformsystem, 1895. On the religion: Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 3 vols., 1896; Rohde, Psyche, 1894.
On Political Conditions and Theory: Newman, Introd. to Politics of Aristotle, 1887; Bradley, Aristotle's Theory of the State in Hellenica; Wilamovitz-Möllendorf, Aristotle und Athen, 1900.
On Nature and Law of Nature: Ritchie, Natural Rights, 1895; Burnet, Int. Journal of Ethics, vii., 1897, pp. 328-33; Hardy, Begriff der Physis, 1884; Voigt, Die Lehre vom jus naturale, 1856-75.
General: Denis, Histoire des Théories et des Idées Morales dans l'Antiquité, 1879; Taylor, Ancient Ideals, 1900; Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 1904; Janet, Histoire de la Science Politique dans ses Rapports avec la Morale, 1887; Grote, History of Greece, 4th ed., 1872; Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, 1888.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Cf. Xenophon's account of the impressive appeal of Clearchus: "For, first and greatest, the oaths which we have sworn by the gods forbid us to be enemies to each other. Whoever is conscious of having transgressed these,—him I could never deem happy. For if one were at war with the gods, I know not with what swiftness he might flee so as to escape, or into what darkness he might run, or into what stronghold he might retreat and find refuge. For all things are everywhere subject to the gods, and the gods rule all everywhere with equity."—Anabasis, II., v.