moral evil.  No, he must not get angry, because it would disturb his sublime calm; and, if he allowed himself to be angry at wrong-doing, he would have to be angry all day long.  This practical Epicureanism, this idle acquiescence in the supposed incurability of evil, poisoned all Seneca’s career.  “He had tutored himself,” says Professor Maurice, “to endure personal injuries without indulging an anger; he had tutored himself to look upon all moral evil without anger.  If the doctrine is sound and the discipline desirable, we must be content to take the whole result of them.  If we will not do that, we must resolve to hate oppression and wrong, even at the cost of philosophical composure" But repose is not to be our aim:—­

     “We have no right to bliss,
      No title from the gods to welfare and repose.”

It is one of the truths which seems to me most needed in the modern religious world, that the type of a Christian’s virtue must be very miserable, and ordinary, and ineffectual, if he does not feel his whole soul burn within him with an almost implacable moral indignation at the sight of cruelty and injustice, of Pharisaic faithlessness and social crimes.

I have thus freely criticised the radical defects of Stoicism, so far as Seneca is its legitimate exponent; but I cannot consent to leave him with the language of depreciation, and therefore here I will once more endorse what an anonymous writer has said of him:  “An unconscious Christianity covers all his sentiments.  If the fair fame of the man is sullied, the aspiration to a higher life cannot be denied to the philosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted Stoicism sometimes sounds through the nobler music, it still leaves the truer melody vibrating on the ear.”

2.  If Seneca sought for EASE, the grand aim of Epictetus was FREEDOM, of Marcus Aurelius was SELF-GOVERNMENT.  This difference of aim characterises their entire philosophy, though all three of them are filled with precepts which arise from the Stoical contempt of opinion, of fortune, and of death.  “Epictetus, the slave, with imperturbable calm, voluntarily strikes off the desire for all those blessings of which fortune had already deprived him.  Seneca, who lived in the Court, fenced himself beforehand against misfortune with the spirit of a man of the world and the emphasis of a master of eloquence.  Marcus Aurelius, at the zenith of human power—­having nothing to dread except his passions, and finding nothing above him except immutable necessity,—­surveys his own soul and meditates especially on the eternal march of things.  The one is the resigned slave, who neither desires nor fears; the other, the great lord, who has everything to lose; the third, finally, the emperor, who is dependent only on himself and upon God.”