Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GKEEK PHILOSOPHY.473language cj cD the work of Alexander, * and still morethe work of the Roman empire, as it was to be ;and more than this, it herein supplied a point offuture contact with Christian morality. The advancefrom the narrowness of the Greek mind inits proud rejection of all iion-hellenic nations, andno less from the revolting selfishness of Romanconquest, is remarkable. And it is an advance ofphilosophic thought. As the older thinkers consideredthe political life of the city to be an immediatedemand of human nature, so the Stoicsconsidered the unitedness of man as a whole together,the dilatation of the particular politicalcommunity to the whole race, in the same light.Its ground was the common possession of reason.The common law which ruled this human commonwealthwas to live according to the dictationf reason, that is, according to nature, in whichth v_ts,57 being one and the samin God and in man, and in them altue branches into four parts, the prud idiscerns and practises the truth; the justice whicassigns his own to each ; the courage which pre-vails over all difficulties; the self-restraint andorder which preserves temperance in all things.These being bound up together cover the wholemoral domain, and embrace all those relations57 "Jam vero virtus eadem in homine ac Deo est, neque ullo alioingenio przeterea. Est autem virtus xrihil aliud quam in se perfecta, etad sum mum perducta natura." De Legibus, i. 8,58 De Officiis, i. 5.