t, 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
(eudaimonia) 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: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii.
ch. liii.]

[Footnote 842: Marcus Aurelius, bk. iii. Sec. 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, "Anechou"--_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