f a friend, if need arise, to
give his comfort or his life for a friend; of a mother to love and
defend her children; though it is true that in the light of eternity
these 'creaturely' affections shrivel into their native worthlessness.
If the will of God is done, and done willingly, all is well. You may, if
it brings you great suffering, feel the pain. You may even, through
human weakness, weep or groan; that can be forgiven. +Esothen mentoi me
stenaxes+, 'But in the centre of your being groan not!' Accept the
Cosmos. Will joyously that which God wills and make the eternal Purpose
your own.

I will say no more of this great body of teaching, as I have dealt with
it in a separate publication.[100:1] But I would point out two special
advantages of a psychological kind which distinguish Stoicism from many
systems of philosophy. First, though it never consciously faced the
psychological problem of instinct, it did see clearly that man does not
necessarily pursue what pleases him most, or what is most profitable to
him, or even his 'good'. It saw that man can determine his end, and may
well choose pain in preference to pleasure. This saved the school from a
great deal of that false schematization which besets most forms of
rationalistic psychology. Secondly, it did build up a system of thought
on which, both in good days and evil, a life can be lived which is not
only saintly, but practically wise and human and beneficent. It did for
practical purposes solve the problem of living, without despair and
without grave, or at least without gross, illusion.

The other great school of the fourth century, a school which, in the
matter of ethics, may be called the only true rival of Stoicism, was
also rooted in defeat. But it met defeat in a different spirit.[101:1]
Epicurus, son of Neocles, of the old Athenian clan of the Philaidae, was
born on a colony in Samos in 341 B. C. His father was evidently poor;
else he would hardly have left Athens to live on a colonial farm, nor
have had to eke out his farming by teaching an elementary school. We do
not know how much the small boy learned from his father. But for older
students there was a famous school on the neighbouring island of Teos,
where a certain Nausiphanes taught the Ionian tradition of Mathematics
and Physics as well as rhetoric and literary subjects. Epicurus went to
this school when he was fourteen, and seems, among other things, to have
imbibed the Atomic Theory of Democr