they concentrate all their
thought, these post-Aristotelian systems have nothing essentially new
to say. Stoicism borrows its principal ideas from the Cynics,
Epicureanism from the Cyrenaics. The post-Aristotelians rearrange old
thoughts in a new order. They take up the ideas of the past and
exaggerate this or that aspect of them. They twist and turn them in
all directions, and squeeze them dry for a drop of new life. {343} But
in the end nothing new eventuates. Greek thought is finished, and
there is nothing new to be got out of it, torture it how they will.
From the first Stoic to the last Neo-Platonist, there is no
essentially new principle added to philosophy, unless we count as such
the sad and jaded ideas which the Neo-Platonists introduced from the
East.

Lastly, subjectivism ends naturally in scepticism, the denial of all
knowledge, the rejection of all philosophy. We have already seen, in
the Sophists, the phenomenon of subjectivism leading to scepticism.
The Sophists made the individual subject the measure of truth and
morals, and in the end this meant the denial of truth and morality
altogether. So it is now. The subjectivism of the Stoics and
Epicureans is followed by the scepticism of Pyrrho and his successors.
With them, as with the Sophists, nothing is true or good in itself,
but only opinion makes it so.

{344}

CHAPTER XV

THE STOICS

Zeno of Cyprus, the founder of the Stoic School, a Greek of Phoenician
descent, was born about 342 B.C., and died in 270. He is said to have
followed philosophy; because he lost all his property in a
ship-wreck--a motive characteristic of the age. He came to Athens, and
learned philosophy under Crates the Cynic, Stilpo the Megaric, and
Polemo the Academic. About 300 B.C. he founded his school at the Stoa
Poecile (many-coloured portico) whence the name Stoic. He died by his
own hand. He was followed by Cleanthes, and then by Chrysippus, as
leaders of the school. Chrysippus was a man of immense productivity
and laborious scholarship. He composed over seven hundred books, but
all are lost. Though not the founder, he was the chief pillar of
Stoicism. The school attracted many adherents, and flourished for many
centuries, not only in Greece, but later in Rome, where the most
thoughtful writers, such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus,
counted themselves among its followers.

We know little for certain as to what share particular Stoics, Zeno,
Cleanthes, or