A Little Book of Stoicism

A Little Book of Stoicism, by St
George Stock

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Title: A Little Book of Stoicism
Author: St George Stock

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BOOK OF STOICISM ***

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A GUIDE TO STOICISM
by St. George Stock

TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 347
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius.

FOREWORD
If you strip Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful misuse of language,
what is left is simply the moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle, dashed with the physics of Heraclitus. 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. A great deal might be said about
Stoicism as a religion and about the part it played in the formation of

Christianity but these subjects were excluded by the plan of this
volume which was to present a sketch of the Stoic doctrine based on
the original authorities.
ST GEORGE STOCK M A Pemb. Coll. Oxford

A GUIDE TO STOICISM.
ST GEORGE STOCK
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
Among the Greeks and Romans of the classical age philosophy
occupied the place taken by religion among ourselves. Their appeal was
to reason not to revelation. To what, asks Cicero in his Offices, are we
to look for training in virtue, if not to philosophy? Now, if truth is
believed to rest upon authority it is natural that it should be impressed
upon the mind from the earliest age, since the essential thing is that it
should be believed, but a truth which makes its appeal to reason must
be content to wait till reason is developed. We are born into the Eastern,
Western or Anglican communion or some other denomination, but it
was of his own free choice that the serious minded young Greek or
Roman embraced the tenets of one of the great sects which divided the
world of philosophy. The motive which led him to do so in the first
instance may have been merely the influence of a friend or a discourse
from some eloquent speaker, but the choice once made was his own
choice, and he adhered to it as such. Conversions from one sect to
another were of quite rare occurrence. A certain Dionysius of Heraclea,
who went over from the Stoics to the Cyrenaics, was ever afterward
known as "the deserter." It was as difficult to be independent in
philosophy as it is with us to be independent in politics. When a young
man joined a school, he committed himself to all its opinions, not only
as to the end of life, which was the main point of division, but as to all
questions on all subjects. The Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics
from the Epicurean; he differed also in his theology and his physics and
his metaphysics. Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought young men

"unfit to hear moral philosophy". And yet it was a question--or rather
the question--of moral philosophy, the answer to which decided the
young man's opinions on all other points. The language which Cicero
sometimes uses about the seriousness of the choice made in early life
and how a young man gets entrammelled by a school before he is really
able to judge, reminds us of what we hear said nowadays about the
danger of a young man's taking orders before his opinions are formed.
To this it was replied that a young man only