Honour he declares to be the rule, and “life according to nature” the end of man’s existence.  And wrong and injustice are more really contrary to this nature than either death, or poverty, or bodily suffering, or any other outward evil.[1] Stoics and Peripatetics are agreed at least on one point—­that bodily pleasures fade into nothing before the splendours of virtue, and that to compare the two is like holding a candle against the sunlight, or setting a drop of brine against the waves of the ocean.  Your Epicurean would have each man live in selfish isolation, engrossed in his private pleasures and pursuits.  We, on the other hand, maintain that “Divine Providence has appointed the world to be a common city for men and gods”, and each one of us to be a part of this vast social system.  And thus every man has his lot and place in life, and should take for his guidance those golden rules of ancient times—­“Obey God; know thyself; shun excess”.  Then, rising to enthusiasm, the philosopher concludes:  “Who cannot but admire the incredible beauty of such a system of morality?  What character in history or in fiction can be grander or more consistent than the ‘wise man’ of the Stoics?  All the riches and glory of the world are his, for he alone can make a right use of all things.  He is ‘free’, though he be bound by chains; ‘rich’, though in the midst of poverty; ‘beautiful’, for the mind is fairer than the body; ‘a king’, for, unlike the tyrants of the world, he is lord of himself; ‘happy’, for he has no need of Solon’s warning to ‘wait till the end’, since a life virtuously spent is a perpetual happiness”.

[Footnote 1:  So Bishop Butler, in the preface to his Sermons upon ’Human Nature’, says they were “intended to explain what is meant by the nature of man, when it is said that virtue consists in following, and vice in deviating from it".]

In the fourth book, Cicero himself proceeds to vindicate the wisdom of the ancients—­the old Academic school of Socrates and his pupils—­against what he considers the novelties of Stoicism.  All that the Stoics have said has been said a hundred times before by Plato and Aristotle, but in nobler language.  They merely “pick out the thorns” and “lay bare the bones” of previous systems, using newfangled terms and misty arguments with a “vainglorious parade”.  Their fine talk about citizens of the world and the ideal wise man is rather poetry than philosophy.  They rightly connect happiness with virtue, and virtue with wisdom; but so did Aristotle some centuries before them.

But their great fault (says Cicero) is, that they ignore the practical side of life.  So broad is the line which they draw between the “wise” and “foolish”, that they would deny to Plato himself the possession of wisdom.  They take no account of the thousand circumstances which go to form our happiness.  To a spiritual being, virtue might be the chief good; but in actual life our physical is closely bound up with our mental