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."