. That freedom they constantly and consistently asserted;
but it comes after all to this, that Man is free to bring his will into
conformity, _through knowledge_, with the Power and the universal
Reason; or, as Dr. Caird puts it,[799] "Man has the choice whether he
will be a willing or an unwilling servant (of the universal Reason):
unwilling, if he makes it his aim to satisfy his particular self, an aim
which he can only attain so far as the general system of things allows
him; willing, if he identifies himself with the divine reason which is
manifested in that system." But that identification of himself with the
divine Reason is again an intellectual process; it can only be realised
by minds highly trained in thinking; it could not have the smallest grip
on the conduct of the ordinary ignorant man, or on the minds of women
and children.

And here we come upon another weak point in Stoicism as presented to the
Roman world in this last century B.C. It was an age in which gentleness,
tenderness, pity, and the philanthropic spirit were most sadly needed,
and it cannot be said of Stoicism that it had any mission to encourage
their growth. The Stoics looked on the mass of men as ignorant and
wicked,[800] and it never occurred to them that it was a duty of the
Good Man to teach and redeem them,--to sacrifice his life, if need be,
in the work of enlightenment. They seem to have thought even of women
and children as hardly partaking of Reason; their ideally good man was
virtuous in a strictly virile way,[801] and it never occurred to them
that training in goodness must begin from the earliest years, and be
gradually developed with infinite sympathy and tenderness. If a man is
to learn that there is something within him which partakes of God, and
which should naturally lead him to right conduct, he must begin to learn
this truth in his infancy.[802] But the absence of a place for emotion
and sympathy in the Stoic system, resulting from the purely intellectual
nature of their central doctrine of Reason, meant also the absence of
any spirit of enthusiastic propaganda. Their notion that emotion or
passion is "a movement of mind contrary to reason and nature,"[803]
lamed their whole system as a progressive force in the world of that
day. Such religious power as it could exercise worked simply through
the radiating influence of a few wise and good men, by nature pure and
unselfish, who gradually familiarised the educated part of soci