here is a man," said this
thinker, "there is an opportunity for a deed of kindness." He believed
in the natural equality of all men. Slaves were such through political
and social causes, and their masters were bidden to refrain from
ill-using them, not only because of the cruelty of such conduct, but
because of "the natural law common to all men," and because "he is of
the same nature as thyself." Seneca denounced the gladiatorial shows
as human butcheries. So mild, tolerant, humane, and equitable was his
teaching that the Christians of a later age were anxious to appropriate
him. Tertullian calls him "Our Seneca," and the facile scribes of the
new faith forged a correspondence between him and their own St. Paul.
One of Seneca's passages is a clear and beautiful statement of rational
altruism. "Nor can anyone live happily," he says, "who has regard to
himself alone, and uses everything for his own interests; thou must live
for thy neighbor, if thou wouldest live for thyself." Eighteen hundred
years afterwards Auguste Comte sublimated this principle into a motto
of his Religion of Humanity--_Vivre pour Autrui_, Live for Others. It is
also expressed more didactically by Ingersoll--"The way to be happy is
to make others so"--making duty and enjoyment go hand in hand.

Pliny, who corresponded with the emperor Trajan, and whose name is
familiar to the student of Christian Evidences, exhorted parents to take
a deep interest in the education of their children. He largely endowed
an institution in his native town of Como, for the assistance of the
children of the poor. His humanity was extended to slaves. He treated
his own with great kindness, allowing them to dispose of their own
earnings, and even to make wills. Of masters who had no regard for their
slaves, he said, "I do not know if they are great and wise; but one
thing I do know, they are not men." Dion Chrysostom, another Stoic,
plainly declared that slavery was an infringement of the natural
rights of men, who were all born for liberty; a dictum which cannot
be paralleled in any part of the New Testament. It must be admitted,
indeed, that Paul, in sending the slave Onesimus back to his master
Philemon, did bespeak humane and even brotherly treatment for the
runaway; but he bespoke it for him as a Christian, not simply as a man,
and uttered no single word in rebuke of the institution of slavery.

Plutarch's humanity was noble and tender. "The proper end of man," he
sai