t which was firm, stable, and the foundation for fairer and
freer growths.

Already in Lucretius, and now again in Epictetus, we have passed from the
Greek into the Roman world. It is a change partly of race, partly of
time, and it is in close analogy with the successive phases of the human
spirit. The mythology which satisfied the youth of the world had grown
unlovely and unreal. Plato's splendid imaginings had yielded neither a
secure basis to the thinker nor a moral guidance to the common man.
Lucretius's interpretation of all events as the product of material law
had small power to sustain or cheer when the intellectual glow of the
bold innovator had subsided. Thoughtful men sought as their one supreme
necessity an adequate and worthy rule of life. So there was wrought out,
or grew, the Stoic philosophy. Based on an intellectual theory, its
working strength lay in its consonance with the best habits and aptitudes
engendered in the world's actual experience. The Greek type was beauty,
pleasure, thought, freedom; the Roman type was law, obedience,
self-mastery. The legion was the school of discipline and fidelity. The
forum was the theatre where classes and parties, through rude jostling,
worked out an efficient political order. A Greek thinker gave the mould,
and Roman virtue gave the metal, of the Stoic type.

We may best study that type in Epictetus,--once a slave, afterward a
teacher; so careless of fame that he left no written work, and we have
only the priceless notes taken down by a faithful scholar, making a book
whose stamp of heroic manhood twenty centuries have not dimmed.

"Man is master of his fate." The true aim of life is goodness, and
goodness is within the command of the will. The lawgiver is Nature, and
Nature bids us to be just, strong, pure, and to seek the good of our
fellows. Such was the essence of Stoicism. As to deity, providence, or
a hereafter,--belief and hope varied, according to the individual; but to
the true Stoic the all-important matter was, Act well your part, here and
now.

In Epictetus is always the note of reality and of victory. While
actually a slave, he has learned the secret of inward freedom. His
essential doctrine is that good and evil reside wholly in the will, and
the will is free. As we choose, so we are. And by the right choice we
find ourselves in harmony with the universe.

Though Epictetus continually appeals to reason, his basal word is to the