The Stoic differs from the Epicurean in his attitude toward the political state. The two Schools agree that the sufficient Wise Man needs the state but little. The Epicurean teaches that society is not natural and not inherent in human nature. The Stoic, however, maintained that society is a divine institution, which gives way only occasionally to man’s individual perfecting. Since man and the cosmic reason are identical, all men are essentially identical. When men therefore lead a life of reason, they lead a social life. This realm of reason includes not Romans alone, but all men, gods, and slaves. But the political government is only secondary, for the Stoic’s ideal is a universal empire. The Stoic’s interest in practical politics was as weak as his ideal of a rational society was transcendent. His teaching of justice and love for man was, however, a forecasting of the coming religious emancipation. There are two antagonistic tendencies running through Stoicism. The first is to seek society with its virtues,――justice, love of men, sociability or cosmopolitanism. The second dispenses with society to gain an inner freedom. Yet these two tendencies often coincide. They may be presented as follows:―― _To seek society._ _To dispense with society._ 1. Exaltation of justice and Exaltation of inner freedom love. and happiness. 2. World citizenship. The Wise Man. 3. Relations and degrees of Absolute virtue and absolute virtue. vice. 4. Virtue depends somewhat on Knowledge alone is virtue. conditions. 5. Individual should submit to Individual should make fate. fate. =Duty and Responsibility.= The Stoic’s identity of human and cosmic reason elevated the law of human conduct into a strict, universal law of duty. It embodies, on the one hand, the Cynic’s protest against external law, and on the other the construction of the inner moral law. The backbone of Stoicism is sense of responsibility. The Stoics brought out as never before the contrast between what is and what ought to be. They were the most outspoken doctrinaires of antiquity, and formed a school of character building in stubbornness. As time went on they substituted human nature for cosmic nature, and then accentuated human nature as conscience. The individual could then define the right for himself, and this sort of individualism was developed with so much skill that it admitted great laxity of morals. Duty commands some things and forbids others, but there are left a great mass of activities that are ethically indifferent. These indifferent matters offered opportunity for these men of conscience to perform what in the eyes of others were crimes (for example, Brutus). Baseness is only what is unconditionally forbidden.