Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

in 2 STOIC DOGMA Ixv
and beneficent. 1 Not merely in general scope, but in
every detail, its action was teleological.
To the consistent
pantheist, imperfection in the universe must argue defect
or unreason in God ; and faith loses every stay unless it
can hold that '
the disposing Reason contains no evil,
does no evil, and inflicts no injury on anything.' 2 To
the perfect Tightness of the whole the Stoic clings with
immovable conviction. Purpose, design, providence,
were everywhere at work, and all lower processes must
be interpreted as means towards higher ends 3
organic life subserving the design of organic, vegetable
or animal ; the vegetable or animal subserving the
social and the rational ; the physical existing for the
intellectual ; the part or individual for the whole. 4 Each
is there to make
part olive or fig tree, horse or dog 5
complete the universal order, of which it forms a
transient part. Man is no exception to the rule, but its
highest and conscious exemplification. To him, too,
the world-order becomes at once a norm and a con-
straining stress, to which his action must (willingly
or
unwillingly) accommodate itself. As a norm of action it
becomes to his moral sense an outer law, empowered
to prescribe authoritative rules of life and obligation,
a '
categorical imperative '
of duty.
in-
' The good man
submits his own judgment to the power that disposes
all, as 6
good citizens to the law of the state.'
1
ii. 2, 3 ; v. 8, 24 ; viii. 35 xii. ; 14.
2
vi. i ii.
; II, 17; vi. 44; ix. 28, 35; x. i, 20; xi. 17; xii. 5.
3 v. 16, 30 ; vii. 55 ; xi. IO, 18.
4 Cf. ii. 3 ; v. 8, 22 ; vi. 45, 54 ; x. 6, 33 ; xi. 18.
5
iv. 6, 23, 48 ; v. 1,6; viii. 15, 19 ; x. 8 ; xii. 16.
6
Epict. i, 12, 7.