Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.477the present life. When that conception canie tcomplete and exalt the Stoic idea, the needdestruction as an issue of the wise man, i as soonas he could not live according to nature, « ceased \^\^s M7KJ \_> V-t 4for man himself ceased to be a part of a physicalwhole governed by necessity. The human city relaxedits right over the individual in presence ofa divine city, which embraced indeed man in hispresent life, but taught him to look for its completerealisation in another.The human commonwealth, however, extendedin idea to the race itself, as possessing reason incommon, and individual man therein, as well asthe whole aggregate, viewed as being ruled by thecardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, andtemperance, biit both the commonwealth and theindividual terminating with this life, was the lastword of heathen philosophy up to the time ofClaudius.We have seen thatfrom the time the Greekrace was absorbed in the Roman empire the systemsof philosophy were broken up by the eclecticspirit, which, engendered within already by theferment of opinions, was strengthened and developedby the accession of the .practical Romanmind. Variety of belief is indeed marked as " theessential feature of Greek philosophy'7 from its outset,and " the antagonist force of suspensive scepticism"as including some of its most powerful intellectsfrom Xenophanes five hundred years before