antiquity, the conviction that duty, as distinguished from every
modification of selfishness, should be the supreme motive of life, was
more clearly enforced among the Stoics than in any later society.

The reader will probably have gathered from the last chapter that there
are four distinct motives which moral teachers may propose for the
purpose of leading men to virtue. They may argue that the disposition of
events is such that prosperity will attend a virtuous life, and
adversity a vicious one--a proposition they may prove by pointing to the
normal course of affairs, and by asserting the existence of a special
Providence in behalf of the good in the present world, and of rewards
and punishments in the future. As far as these latter arguments are
concerned, the efficacy of such teaching rests upon the firmness with
which certain theological tenets are held, while the force of the first
considerations will depend upon the degree and manner in which society
is organised, for there are undoubtedly some conditions of society in
which a perfectly upright life has not even a general tendency to
prosperity. The peculiar circumstances and dispositions of individuals
will also influence largely the way in which they receive such teaching,
and, as Cicero observed, "what one utility has created, another will
often destroy."

They may argue, again, that vice is to the mind what disease is to the
body, and that a state of virtue is in consequence a state of health.
Just as bodily health is desired for its own sake, as being the absence
of a painful or at least displeasing state, so a well-ordered and
virtuous mind may be valued for its own sake, and independently of all
the external good to which it may lead, as being a condition of
happiness; and a mind distracted by passion and vice may be avoided, not
so much because it is an obstacle in the pursuit of prosperity, as