y seen. Every appetite, lust,
desire, springs from imperfect knowledge. Our nature is imposed upon
us by Fate, but we must learn to control our passions, and live free,
intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason. Our
existence should be intellectual, we should survey with equanimity all
pleasures and all pains. We should never forget that we are freemen, not
the slaves of society. "I possess," said the Stoic, "a treasure which
not all the world can rob me of--no one can deprive me of death." We
should remember that Nature in her operations aims at the universal, and
never spares individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplishment
of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating,
as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fortitude,
justice. We must remember that every thing around us is in mutation;
decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and that it is
useless to repine at death in a world where every thing is dying. As a
cataract shows from year to year an invariable shape, though the water
composing it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is nothing
more than a flow of matter presenting an impermanent form. The universe,
considered as a whole, is unchangeable. Nothing is eternal but
space, atoms, force. The forms of Nature that we see are essentially
transitory, they must all pass away.

STOICISM IN THE MUSEUM. We must bear in mind that the majority of men
are imperfectly educated, and hence we must not needlessly offend the
religious ideas of our age. It is enough for us ourselves to know that,
though there is a Supreme Power, there is no Supreme Being. There is an
invisible principle, but not a personal God, to whom it would be not
so much blasphemy as absurdity to impute the form, the sentiments, the
passions of man. All revelation is, necessarily, a mere fiction. That
which men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause. Even of
chances there is a law. There is no such thing as Providence, for Nature
proceeds under irresistible laws, and in this respect the universe is
only a vast automatic engine. The vital force which pervades the world
is what the illiterate call God. The modifications through which all
things are running take place in an irresistible way, and hence it may
be said that the progress of the world is, under Destiny, like a seed,
it can evolve only in a predetermined mode.

The soul of man is a spark