hat is the
rule which the practical world follows, though without talking about
it; but the Stoics would have none of any such compromise.

Zeno first, like Antisthenes, denied any value whatever to these earthly
things that are not virtue--to health or sickness, riches or poverty,
beauty or ugliness, pain or pleasure; who would ever mention them when
the soul stood naked before God? All that would then matter, and
consequently all that can ever matter, is the goodness of the man's
self, that is, of his free and living will. The Stoics improved on the
military metaphor; for to the soldier, after all, it does matter whether
in his part of the field he wins or loses. Life is not like a battle but
like a play, in which God has handed each man his part unread, and the
good man proceeds to act it to the best of his power, not knowing what
may happen in the last scene. He may become a crowned king, he may be a
slave dying in torment. What matters it? The good actor can play either
part. All that matters is that he shall act his best, accept the order
of the Cosmos and obey the Purpose of the great Dramaturge.

The answer seems absolute and unyielding, with no concession to the
weakness of the flesh. Yet, in truth, it contains in itself the germ of
a sublime practical compromise which makes Stoicism human. It accepts
the Cosmos and it obeys the Purpose; therefore there is a Cosmos, and
there is a purpose in the world. Stoicism, like much of ancient thought
at this period, was permeated by the new discoveries of astronomy and
their formation into a coherent scientific system, which remained
unshaken till the days of Copernicus. The stars, which had always moved
men's wonder and even worship, were now seen and proved to be no
wandering fires but parts of an immense and apparently eternal order.
One star might differ from another star in glory, but they were all
alike in their obedience to law. They had their fixed courses, divine
though they were, which had been laid down for them by a Being greater
than they. The Order, or Cosmos, was a proven fact; therefore, the
Purpose was a proven fact; and, though in its completeness inscrutable,
it could at least in part be divined from the fact that all these varied
and eternal splendours had for their centre our Earth and its ephemeral
master. The Purpose, though it is not our Purpose, is especially
concerned with us and circles round us. It is the purpose of a God who
loves Man.

Le