Yet it must not be supposed that the Stoics generally employed the indifferent as an excuse for moral license. On the contrary, the concept of life as a struggle originated with the Stoics, and from them it passed into the common consciousness of man. There was before them (1) the struggle with environment dominated by a false evaluation, (2) the struggle with effete civilization, (3) the struggle particularly with one’s self. The Stoic hero of inner courage and greatness of soul rises above his fellows, not because he gains dominion over the world, but because in indifference to it he isolates himself. He exists in premeditation of doing rather than in the actual doing in which his power would be spent. Still, in the absolute contrast between the good and the evil, in making life a disjunctive, an “Either――Or,” duty got a definite and distinct meaning. Duty, according to the Stoics’ conception, had not so much the nature of an imperative as of what is suitable,――an act adapted to nature, a consistent and justifiable act. In a manner unknown to antiquity the ethical nature of conduct was thus universalized in the new conceptions of philanthropy, of the universality of God and man, in the tendency to suppress slavery and care for the poor and sick. Nevertheless, as a moral force Stoicism accepted the world as it found the world, and did not attempt to make it over. =The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Freedom.= On the questions of moral freedom and evil, the Stoics suffered severe attacks from the Academy and the Epicureans. Alone among the Schools of antiquity the Stoics preached the doctrine of Fate. The demands of ethical responsibility, however, required that the individual should determine his own conduct. To suit these demands the Stoic did not modify his fundamental conception of Nature, but he tried to justify his position on the ground that the individual expressed the law of nature. His argument may be stated thus: Man is like God; Man is one with God; Man is free. It was also stated on psychological grounds. Man can have one of two attitudes toward the world-law: (1) his performance may be through blind compulsion; (2) his performance may be through an intelligent understanding of the law, in which case he is free. The occurrence of his act is fateful, but it makes great difference to the man whether the occurrence is in spite of him or with his intelligent acquiescence. The occurrence is not an evil in itself; for physical evils are no evils, and things that appear to be moral evils are (1) subservient to the good; (2) merely relative to good; or (3) show that God’s ways are not our ways. My will is mine though necessary; my will is mine though it be law. The soul is free when it fulfills its own destiny. God works through man’s will. Outer circumstances are only accessory causes, but the main cause is the assent of the will. At the same time the Stoics did not shrink from the logic of their own fatalism.