sight, to perceive the necessary order of things, and partly in
conformity, to perceive that this order, whatever it might be, could
serve the soul to exercise itself upon, and to face with equanimity.

Despair, in this system, flooded a much larger area of human life;
everything, in fact, was surrendered except the will to endure whatever
might come. The concentration was much more marked, since only a formal
power of perception and defiance was retained and made the sphere of
moral life; this rational power, at least in theory, was the one peak
that remained visible above the deluge. But in practice much more was
retained. Some distinction was drawn, however unwarrantably, between
external calamities and human turpitude, so that absolute conformity and
acceptance might not be demanded by the latter; although the chief
occasion which a Stoic could find to practise fortitude and recognise
the omnipresence of law was in noting the universal corruption of the
state and divining its ruin. The obligation to conform to nature
(which, strictly speaking, could not be disregarded in any case) was
interpreted to signify that every one should perform the offices
conventionally attached to his station. In this way a perfunctory
citizenship and humanity were restored to the philosopher. But the
restored life was merely histrionic: the Stoic was a recluse parading
the market-place and a monk disguised in armour. His interest and faith
were centred altogether on his private spiritual condition. He
cultivated the society of those persons who, he thought, might teach him
some virtue. He attended to the affairs of state so as to exercise his
patience. He might even lead an army to battle, if he wished to test his
endurance and make sure that philosophy had rendered him indifferent to
the issue.

[Sidenote: Conformity the core of Islam.]

The strain and artifice of such a discipline, with merely formal goals
and no hope on earth or in heaven, could not long maintain itself; and
doubtless it existed, at a particular juncture, only in a few souls.
Resignation to the will of God, says Bishop Butler, is _the whole of
piety_; yet mere resignation would make a sorry religion and the
negation of all morality, unless the will of God was understood to be
quite different from his operation in nature. To turn Stoicism into a
workable religion we need to qualify it with some pre-rational maxims.
Islam, for instance, which boasts that in its essenc