t is to do his duty, and to tell the
truth.

The second distinguishing feature of stoicism I have noticed was the
complete suppression of the affections to make way for the absolute
ascendency of reason. There are two great divisions of character
corresponding very nearly to the stoical and epicurean temperaments I
have described--that in which the will predominates, and that in which
the desires are supreme. A good man of the first class is one whose
will, directed by a sense of duty, pursues the course he believes to be
right, in spite of strong temptations to pursue an opposite course,
arising either from his own passions and tendencies, or from the
circumstances that surround him. A good man of the second class is one
who is so happily constituted that his sympathies and desires
instinctively tend to virtuous ends. The first character is the only one
to which we can, strictly speaking, attach the idea of merit, and is
also the only one which is capable of rising to high efforts of
continuous and heroic self-sacrifice; but on the other hand, there is a
charm in the spontaneous action of the unforced desires which
disciplined virtue can perhaps never attain. The man who is consistently
generous through a sense of duty, when his natural temperament impels
him to avarice, and when every exercise of benevolence causes him a
pang, deserves in the very highest degree our admiration; but he whose
generosity costs him no effort, but is the natural gratification of his
affections, attracts a far larger measure of our love. Corresponding to
these two casts of character, we find two distinct theories of
education, the aim of the one being chiefly to strengthen the will, and
that of the other to guide the desires. The principal examples of the
first are the Spartan and stoical systems of antiquity, and, with some
modifications, the asceticism of the Middle Ages. The object of these
systems was to enable men to endure pain, to repress manifest and
acknowledged desires, to relinquish enjoyments, to establish an absolute
empire over their emotions. On the other hand, there is a method of
education which was never more prevalent than in the present day, which
exhausts its efforts in making virtue attractive, in associating it with
all the charms of imagination and of prosperity, and in thus insensibly
drawing the desires in the wished for direction. As the first system is
especially suited to a disturbed and military society, which