The older Greek moralists are concerned with the State. Their interest is absorbed in the maintenance of the organization of society which is embodied in the city-republic, so that the free citizens can continue to live the life of freedom. The type of complete manhood is to be realized. All around there is the activity of men who receive no consideration except so far as they are means to this end. But amid the mighty political and social revolutions which lead to the creation of the Empire this mentality ceases to be accepted as a matter of course. The fearful experiences it goes through cause feeling to become more human, and the horizons of ethics are widened. The city-republic, on which ethical thinking had been built up, has disappeared, but an empire now crushes men down just in the same way. Thus the individual man as such becomes the object of reflexion and of ethics. The conception of the brotherhood of all men appears. A disposition to humanity makes itself heard, and Seneca condemns the gladiatorial shows. Nay more: even the [pg 054] inner relationship between mankind and the animal world is recognized. So now when they have caught sight of mankind as a whole and man as such, ethics reach such a depth and breadth as allows them to try to comprehend themselves in a universal world-will. Henceforth nature-philosophy and ethics can work together. Stoicism had from the very beginning a vision of this, but had not been able to make it a reality, since it had not at its disposal the needful living and universalist ethic. But there is another reason why optimism and ethics can now in nature-philosophy come into power. The old school of the Porch was crushed down into resignation just in proportion as it submitted to the necessity for critical thinking. But as time goes on, the practical and religious instincts which were always present in its world-view, gain in strength. The antiquity which is passing away is no longer critical, but either sceptical or religious, and therefore the later school of the Porch can let itself be guided by the ethical demands of its world-view much more completely than the old one could. It becomes at once deeper and more simple than the latter, and, like Chinese ethical monism, rises to such freedom from limitations as to be able to interpret the world-will as ethical. So now Stoics appear who, like Confucius, like Mencius, and like Chwang-tse, and indeed, like the Rationalists of the eighteenth century, preach ethics as something grounded in the nature of the universe and of mankind. They cannot prove the truth of this world-view any better than could Zeno and his pupils, who also resorted to it, but they announce it with an inner conviction which the former could not command, and produce their results by means of an enthusiasm which was denied to their predecessors.