he is exempt from desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity.  Nor must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member of the whole body of mankind.  He ought to marry, and to take part in public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.  Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond the reach of man.  They were discontented with themselves and with all around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt.  They had a profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls “success in life;” but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty and stern virtue in their degenerate times.  Their God was made subject to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature.  Thus their system was pantheistic.  But they maintained the dignity of reason, and sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully to reach.

Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his constitution was not strong.  He retained his powers by great abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread.  He was a modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the society of more than two or three friends at a time.  He was as plain in his dress as he was frugal in his habits,—­a man of great decorum and propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines the Chinese sage Confucius.  And yet this good man, a pattern to the loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself.  Suicide was not deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans.  The doctrines of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though influential party.

With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason.  The struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended in doubt and in despair.  It was discovered that all of them were wrong, or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until “the fulness of time” should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.