reflects that this event is no obstacle to his own virtue, and therefore he does not suffer deeply.
Friendship, so highly prized by Epicurus, is all very well, but it must not be carried to the point
where your friend's misfortunes can destroy your holy calm. As for public life, it may be your
duty to engage in it, since it gives opportunities for justice, fortitude, and so on; but you must
not be actuated by a desire to benefit mankind, since the benefits you can confer--such as peace,
or a more adequate supply of food--are no true benefits, and, in any case, nothing matters to you
except your own virtue. The Stoic is not virtuous in order to do good, but does good in order to
be virtuous. It has not occurred to him to love his neighbour as himself; love, except in a
superficial sense, is absent from his conception of virtue.
When I say this, I am thinking of love as an emotion, not as a principle. As a principle, the
Stoics preached universal love; this principle is found in Seneca and his successors, and
probably was taken by them from earlier Stoics. The logic of the school led to doctrines which
were softened by the humanity of its adherents, who were much better men than they would
have been if they had been consistent. Kant--who resembles them--says that you must be kind
to your brother, not because you are fond of him, but because the moral law enjoins kindness; I
doubt, however, whether, in private life, he lived down to this precept.
Leaving these generalities, let us come to the history of Stoicism.
Of Zeno, * only some fragments remain. From these it appears that he defined God as the fiery
mind of the world, that he said God was a bodily substance, and that the whole universe formed
the substance of God; Tertullian says that, according to Zeno, God runs through the material
world as honey runs through the honeycomb. According to Diogenes Laertius, Zeno held that
the General Law, which is Right Reason, pervading everything, is the same as Zeus, the
Supreme Head of the government of the universe: God, Mind, Destiny, Zeus, are one thing.
Destiny is a power which moves matter; "Providence" and "Nature" are other names for it. Zeno
does not believe that there should be temples to the gods: "To build temples there will be no
need: for a temple must not be held a thing of great worth or anything holy. Nothing can be of
great worth or holy which
* For the sources of what follows, see Bevan, Later Greek Religion, p. 1 ff.