A Guide to Stoicism

religion and about the part it played in the formation

Stoicism was not so much a new doctrine as the form under which the old Greek philosophy finally presented itself to the world at large. It owed its popularity in some measure to its extravagance

Another definition of theirs puts the matter still more clearly. 'What each thing is when its growth has been completed, that we declare to be the nature of each thing'.

Following out this conception the Stoics identified a life in accordance with nature with a life in accordance with the highest perfection to which man could attain. Now, as man was essentially a rational animal, his work as man lay in living the rational life. And the perfection of reason was virtue.