Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

ii 2 BIRTH OF STOICISM xlvii
changed. Technically, indeed, the supremacy and inde-
pendence of the will was left untouched, and its dis-
regard of things indifferent was as unqualified and
uncompromising as its rejection of things undesirable ;
but reason, notwithstanding, made allowances which
the virtuous will could not admit;
it established from
its own point of view classifications and degrees of
merit, it attached conditional values and preferential
claims to recognition, according as things tended to
advance or to retard the life according to nature, and
so reduced the number of things strictly indifferent
to a remnant which stood out of all determining rela-
tion with the will, and to which reason itself could not
ascribe such secondary value, positive or negative. In this
way a body of scientific casuistry was elaborated, which
classified things indifferent whether mental qualities
or emotions, bodily or social conditions, external or
imputed goods, proprieties or defaults of behaviour or
demeanour in categories of relative esteem, that went
further in minuteness and subtlety of discrimination
than in any other school of ancient psychology.
These
could not indeed affect the crowning act, the realisa-
tion of virtue in the will, without thereby losing their
character of 'indifference' and passing into another
category of things, but they could so pave the way to
virtue, and make the approaches easy and insensible,
that the tiro might by
their aid be conducted to the
threshold of the sanctuary, and, passing by a step
from the region of folly to the fruition of wisdom, be
numbered among the elect and indefectible.
By these steps Stoicism entirely altered the physiog-