hilosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted Stoicism sometimes
sounds through the nobler music, it still leaves the truer melody
vibrating on the ear."

2. If Seneca sought for EASE, the grand aim of Epictetus was FREEDOM, of
Marcus Aurelius was SELF-GOVERNMENT. This difference of aim
characterises their entire philosophy, though all three of them are
filled with precepts which arise from the Stoical contempt of opinion,
of fortune, and of death. "Epictetus, the slave, with imperturbable
calm, voluntarily strikes off the desire for all those blessings of
which fortune had already deprived him. Seneca, who lived in the Court,
fenced himself beforehand against misfortune with the spirit of a man of
the world and the emphasis of a master of eloquence. Marcus Aurelius, at
the zenith of human power--having nothing to dread except his passions,
and finding nothing above him except immutable necessity,--surveys his
own soul and meditates especially on the eternal march of things. The
one is the resigned slave, who neither desires nor fears; the other, the
great lord, who has everything to lose; the third, finally, the emperor,
who is dependent only on himself and upon God."

Of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we shall have very little to say by way
of summary, for they show no inconsistencies and very few of the
imperfections which characterise Seneca's ideal of the Stoic philosophy.
The "moral peddling," the pedagogic display, the puerile ostentation,
the antithetic brilliancy, which we have had to point out in Seneca, are
wanting in them. The picture of the _inner_ life, indeed, of Seneca, his
efforts after self-discipline, his untiring asceticism, his enthusiasm
for all that he esteems holy and of good report-this picture, marred as
it is by rhetoric and vain self-conceit, yet "stands out in noble
contrast to the swinishness of the Campanian villas, and is, in its
complex entirety, very sad and affecting." And yet we must admit, in the
words of the same writer, that when we go from Seneca to Epictetus and
Marcus Aurelius, "it is going from the florid to the severe, from varied
feeling to the impersonal simplicity of the teacher, often from idle
rhetoric to devout earnestness." As far as it goes, the morality of
these two great Stoics is entirely noble and entirely beautiful. If
there be even in Epictetus some passing and occasional touch of Stoic
arrogance and Stoic apathy; if there be in Marcus Aurelius a depth and
inte