ONE:The simple dread of death, considered as a final annihilation of our existence, remained to be dealt with. There was no part of his philosophy on which Epicurus laid so much stress; he regarded it as setting the seal on those convictions, a firm grasp of which was essential to the security of human happiness. Nothing else seemed difficult, if once the worst enemy of our tranquillity had been overcome. His argument is summed up in the concise formula: when we are, death is not; when death is, we are not; therefore death is nothing to us.175 The pleasures of life will be no loss, for we shall not feel the want of them. The sorrow of our dearest friends will be indifferent to us in the absence of all consciousness90 whatever. To the consideration that, however calmly we may face our own annihilation, the loss of those whom we love remains as terrible as ever, Lucretius replies that we need not mourn for them, since they do not feel any pain at their own extinction.176
THREE:"What are you going to do?" she asked meaningly.The treatment of the passions by the Stoic school presents greater difficulties, due partly to their own vacillation, partly to the very indefinite nature of the feelings in question. It will be admitted that here also the claims of duty are supreme. To follow the promptings of fear or of anger, of pity or of love, without considering the ulterior consequences of our action, is, of course, wrong. For even if, in any particular instance, no harm comes of the concession, we cannot be sure that such will always be the case; and meanwhile the passion is23 strengthened by indulgence. And we have also to consider the bad effect produced on the character of those who, finding themselves the object of passion, learn to address themselves to it instead of to reason. Difficulties arise when we begin to consider how far education should aim at the systematic discouragement of strong emotion. Here the Stoics seem to have taken up a position not very consistent either with their appeals to Nature or with their teleological assumptions. Nothing strikes one as more unnatural than the complete absence of human feeling; and a believer in design might plausibly maintain that every emotion conduced to the preservation either of the individual or of the race. We find, however, that the Stoics, here as elsewhere reversing the Aristotelian method, would not admit the existence of a psychological distinction between reason and passion. According to their analysis, the emotions are so many different forms of judgment. Joy and sorrow are false opinions respecting good and evil in the present: desire and fear, false opinions respecting good and evil in the future.53 But, granting a righteous will to be the only good, and its absence the only evil, there can be no room for any of these feelings in the mind of a truly virtuous man, since his opinions on the subject of good are correct, and its possession depends entirely on himself. Everything else arises from an external necessity, to strive with which would be useless because it is inevitable, foolish because it is beneficent, and impious because it is supremely wise.
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