ety with
a nobler idea of God than the old religion had ever been able to supply,
and with that other inspiring idea of the near relation of Man to God as
partaking of His nature. But the active enthusiasm of a real
religion--the _effective_ desire to be in right relation with the
Power--was strange to Stoicism. In one way or another it had many
excellent results; it cleared the ground, for example, for a new and
universal religion by putting into the shade, if not altogether out of
the way, the old local cults with their narrow and limited civic force:
it glorified the idea of law and order in an age when the Roman world
seemed to be forgetting what these sacred words meant; _but a real
active enthusiasm of humanity was wanting in it_. Hence there is a
certain hopelessness about Stoicism, which increased rather than
diminished as the world went on, and such as is seen in a kind of sad
grandeur in Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor. Of him it may be said,
both as emperor and philosopher, as has been said of the Stoic in
general, that "he was essentially a soldier left to hold a fort
surrounded by overpowering hosts of the enemy. He could not conquer or
drive them away, but he could hold out to the last and die at his post."

NOTES TO LECTURE XVI.

[755] See, _e.g._ Livy iii. 20: "Sed nondum haec, quae
nunc tenet saeculum, neglegentia deum venerat; nec
interpretando sibi quisque iusiurandum et leges aptas
faciebat, sed suos potius mores ad ea accommodabat." Cp.
Cic. _de Off._ iii. 111.

[756] Two Epicureans were expelled from Rome in 173
(probably), Athenaeus, p. 547. Cicero, _Tusc._ iv. 3, 7,
gives some idea of the later popularity of the school in
the first half of the last century B.C.

[757] So Masson, _Lucretius_, i. 263, 271.

[758] See Masson i. ch. xii. and ii. p. 141 foll.;
Mayor's Cicero _de Nat. Deor._ vol. i. xlviii. and 138
foll.; Guyau, _La Morale d'Epicure_ (ed. 4), p. 171
foll.

[759] Cic. _N.D._ i. 19, 49 foll., and many other
passages; Diog. Laert. x. 55; Zeller, _Stoics,
Epicureans, and Sceptics_, p. 441 foll.; Masson i. 292,
who aptly quotes Cotta the academic critic in Cicero's
dialogue: "When Epicurus takes away from the gods the
power of helping and doing good, he extirpates the very
roots of religion from the minds of men" (Cic. _N.D._ i.
45. 121). One may add with Dr. Masson (i. 416 foll.)