Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION SECT.
common to all the post-Aristotelian, or more truly to all
post-Alexandrian, schools are another testimony to the
freshness and sincerity of the Greek intelligence. In
all alike Stoic, Epicurean, or Cyrenaic the civic basis
is abandoned for the individualist and universal. The
ethical ideal becomes internal and, as the city widens to
the world, transcends limitations of status or franchise ;
and belongs to man as man, the common seal of his
humanity. As a consequence of this it becomes,
or appears to become, for a time, less vital in its effect
upon the lives of individuals; it plays less obvious a
part in history ; the Athenian or the Spartan ideal, by
virtue of its limitations, visibly dominates the lives and
words and behaviour of representative Athenians or
Spartans ; it is tangible
and unmistakable. A universal
ideal is less determinate, and in so far frequently less
efficacious ; more remote and unattainable in practice,
it is prone to compromise with tradition and environ-
ment ; the Stoic Wise Man does not appear upon
the stage of history, least of all in the days or place
which first promulgated the idea. Stoic morality was
indeed too novel, too many-sided, and too revolutionary
for immediate realisation in the arena of public action.
In repudiating the civic tie, it failed at first to supply
effective substitutes and incentives to altruistic obligation :
politically and socially it was for a time sterile, and
indeed rather a naturalised than native product of true
Hellenism. Throughout the Hellenic stage,
it is im-
possible to instance great personalities avowedly con-
forming aim and practice to Stoic principles. Though
these gradually, no doubt, began to leaven moral