Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

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An
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The Delay of the Deity
seems to have regarded both the soul and the body as eternal
and uncreated, but the latter without form until it was united
with the soul. Or we may put the case otherwise by saying
that the soul, upon entering into a conscious existence, shapes
the hitherto formless body into an abode for itself. He also
holds that the soul consists of two parts: The one part seeks
after truth and has an affection for the beautiful: the other
subject to the passions and under the dominion of error.
For which reason," the author here assumes that the words
s0o$ and YjOos are from the same root. The former means, use
and wont; the latter was originally applied! to the haunts or
abodes of animals; then the manners, habits, and dispositions
of men. Aristotle says, r
t
ff fjfl .xij ^ e0ou$ xeptybeTat,
is
oBev xa>.
T0ovofj.a ff%i)xe [itxpov -zfux/Jvov a/ro ron ijOous. (Ethical is
from e0o?, for which reason the word differs but slightly from
rjffos.) Plutarch himself says that custom is second nature.
It is easy to trace the connection between a man s acts and the
psychical forces, the character, that produces them.
8. ill-omened deed." It was a prevalent belief in
antiquity that misfortunes fell upon those who were concerned
in disturbing a swallow s nest.
10. Near the end. The Greeks ventured to consult oracles
of the dead only on rare and extraodinary occasions. They
probably borrowed the custom from the East.
11. The story of Glaucus is told at length by Herodotus in
the third book of his history and is often alluded toby later
writers. The ethical import of the anecdote is far=reaching.
17. Gardens of Adonis." Shakespeare probably had these
in mind when he wrote (King Henry VI. Part 1, scene sixth):
Thy promises are like Adonis gardens, That one day bloomed
and fruitful were the next." At Taenarus, the most southern
point of the Peloponnesus, there was believed to bean entrance
to the lower world.
22. "None more dreaded by his enemies." To return good
for good and evil for evil was a fundamental article of Greek
ethics. It is more than once alluded to in the Anabasis, and is
found in nearly all Greek writers. Socrates, however, takes a
firm stand against the principle and maintains that whatever
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