=The Conceptions of Nature and Personality supplement each other.= Thus fundamentally the personality is identical with the cosmos――it is reason. To turn the matter about, by reason or “nature” the Stoic means two things that are essentially one. He means the reason of man, or the reason of the world; to “live according to nature” is to live according to the nature of man or according to the nature of the world. The life of the Wise Man as a harmony with physical nature is a harmony with itself as well. The antithesis to “nature” or “reason” is sensuous nature. What we speak of as the natural impulses were not “natural” at all in the Stoic teaching. “Nature” as universal is the creative cosmic power acting for ends. Coördination with this constitutes morality. It is a willing obedience to eternal necessity. The “fool” acts according to his sensations and impulses, and therefore against “nature.” But the Wise Man, by withdrawing within himself, is his own independent master because he is acting universally. “Nature” is the life-unity of the human soul with the world reason. True individual morality is therefore universal morality, complete humanity, universal rationality. To obey “nature” is to develop the essential germ in one’s self. Thus these two points of view were obtained of life-unity: a universe rationally guiding in all its changes; the human individual epitomizing this universe in himself as a rule for his conduct amid his vicissitudes. =The Stoic and Society.= Men are divided into two classes,――the entirely wise and virtuous, or the entirely foolish and vicious. There is no middle ground. If a man possesses a sound reason, he has all the virtues; if he lacks this reason, he lacks all. There are only a few Sages; the mass of men are fools. The Stoics were continually lamenting with Pharisaical pessimism the great baseness of men. From their sublime height they looked upon the Wise Man as incapable of sin, upon the fool as incapable of virtue. In thus denying the ordinary distinctions between good and evil, they were dangerous in politics. Their political perspective was not reliable. In general, they did not enter the politics of the democracies where they lived. They were, however, often the advisers of tyrants, and often assisted in removing them (as in the case of Julius Cæsar). The Stoic School of Musonius Rufus made a splendid Puritan protest against Nero and Domitian, and finally his disciples and friends controlled the empire for a century (second century A. D.).[37] The Stoic regarded his Wise Man as attaining the same independence that the Epicurean claimed for his Wise Man. He is lord and king. He is inferior to no other rational being, not even to Zeus himself.