was the prudence and dignity of bringing our volitions into harmony with the schemes of Providence:  which (they said) were always arranged with a view to the happiness of the kosmos on the whole.  The bad man, whose volitions conflict with these schemes, is always baulked of his expectations, and brought at last against his will to see things carried by an overruling force, with aggravated pain and humiliation to himself:  while the good man, who resigns himself to them from the first, always escapes with less pain, and often without any at all. Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

We have thus seen that in regard to the doctrine called in modern times the Freedom of the Will (i.e., that volitions are self-originating and unpredictable), the Stoic theorists not only denied it, but framed all their Ethics upon the assumption of the contrary.  This same assumption of the contrary, indeed, was made also by Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus:  in short, by all the ethical teachers of antiquity.  All of them believed that volitions depended on causes:  that under the ordinary conditions of men’s minds, the causes that volitions generally depended upon are often misleading and sometimes ruinous:  but that by proper stimulation from without and meditation within, the rational causes of volition might be made to overrule the impulsive.  Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, not less than the Stoics, wished to create new fixed habits and a new type of character.  They differed, indeed, on the question what the proper type of character was:  but each of them aimed at the same general end—­a new type of character, regulating the grades of susceptibility to different motives.  And the purpose of all and each of these moralists precludes the theory of free-will—­i.e., the theory that our volitions are self-originating and unpredictable.

III.—­We must consider next the Stoical theory of Happiness, or rather of the Good, which with them was proclaimed to be the sole, indispensable, and self-sufficing condition of Happiness.  They declared that Pleasure was no part of Good, and Pain no part of Evil; therefore, that even relief from pain was not necessary to Good or Happiness.  This, however, if followed out consistently, would dispense with all morality and all human endeavour.  Accordingly, the Stoics were obliged to let in some pleasures as an object of pursuit, and some pains as an object of avoidance, though not under the title of Good and Evil, but with the inferior name of Sumenda and Rejicienda.[9] Substantially, therefore, they held that pains are an evil, but, by a proper discipline, may be triumphed over.  They disallowed the direct and ostensible pursuit of pleasure as an end (the point of view of Epicurus), but allured their followers partly by promising them the victory over pain, and partly by certain enjoyments of an elevated cast that grew out of their plan of life.