nct and serious limitations. He assumes that to
avoid all perturbation is the aim of the wise man. This can be
accomplished only by the sacrifice of all objects of desire which lie
outside of the control of the will, and he advises this sacrifice. "If
you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you love;
for when it has been broken you will not be disturbed. If you are
kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are
kissing, for when the wife or child dies you will not be disturbed."

All joys but the purely moral are to be despised. In going to the
theatre one should be indifferent to who gains the prize. This attempted
indifference to all the great and little pleasures of life which have no
distinct moral character, if successful, makes an ascetic, and of most
men is liable to make prigs. It is the vice of Puritanism.

The modern world is riper and richer than the Roman world. We say now,
the ideal man is not "unperturbed." Perturbations are inevitable to the
man normally and highly developed, with sensibilities and sympathies
keenly alive. The true aim is to include composure, but not as sole and
supreme. This is a more complex development than the Stoic, less capable
perhaps of symmetrical completeness, but grander, as a Gothic church is
grander than a Greek temple.

Again, the assumption of Epictetus and of all the Stoics that the will is
wholly free, that man has only to choose and seek goodness and he can
perfectly achieve it, misses the familiar and bitter experience of
humanity, that too often man carries his prison and fetters within
himself. A Roman poet voiced it: _Meliora video proboque, deteriora
sequor_. Paul spoke it: "The good that I would, I do not; and the evil I
would not, that I do."

But Epictetus himself is one of the great souls who are not to be
described by the label of any creed. He has in himself the secret of
spiritual victory, and he has a peculiar power to impart it. The
limitations of Stoicism as a creed are more plainly seen in Marcus
Aurelius. His character, revealed in the "fierce light that beats upon a
throne," is of rare nobility and beauty. To a man's strength he unites a
woman's tenderness. Just because of that tenderness, and the deep heart
of which it is the flower, the philosophy he so bravely practices gives
him but a bleak and chill abiding-place. Through his Meditations--manly,
wise, and gracious--there runs a dee