"--(Ep.
lxv. 24); which again is a Latin version of the old Stoical doctrine,
[Greek phrase eis apan tou kosou meros diekei o nous, kataper aph emon
e psuche].
So far as the testimony for the universality of what ordinary people
call "evil" goes, there is nothing better than the writings of the
Stoics themselves. They might serve, as a storehouse for the epigrams
of the ultra-pessimists. Heracleitus (circa 500 B.C.) says just as
hard things about ordinary humanity as his disciples centuries later;
and there really seems no need to seek for the causes of this dark
view of life in the circumstances of the time of Alexander's
successors or of the early Emperors of Rome. To the man with an
ethical ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem full of
evil.
Note 14 (P. 73).
I use the well-known phrase, but decline responsibility for the libel
upon Epicurus, whose doctrines [111] were far less compatible with
existence in a style than those of the Cynics. If it were steadily
borne in mind that the conception of the "flesh" as the source of
evil, and the great saying "Initium est salutis notitia peccati," are
the property of Epicurus, fewer illusions about Epicureanism would
pass muster for accepted truth.
Note 15 (P. 75).
The Stoics said that man was a [Greek phrase zoon logikon politikon
philallelon], or a rational, a political, and an altruistic or
philanthropic animal.
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