The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C.  He was the son of wealthy parents, but was reduced to poverty by misfortune.  He was so good a man, and so profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys of their citadel.  He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.  Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the Stoa, “the Porch,” which had once been the resort of the poets.  Hence the name of his school.  He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions, although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers.  “The Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason.  They had shown that perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself.”  Then they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation.  But Zeno, taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the scepticism of Hume.

Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected with the duties of practical life.  The contemplation, meditation, and thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert recommendation of selfish enjoyment.  The wisdom which it should be the aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with Nature.  To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.  And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.  With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state.  They made four things to be indispensable to virtue,—­a knowledge of good and evil, which is the province of the reason; temperance, a knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; fortitude, a conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and justice, or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual.  They made perfection necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.  The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of external events; he submits to the law of destiny;