The answer seems absolute and unyielding, with no concession to the weakness of the flesh. Yet, in truth, it contains in itself the germ of a sublime practical compromise which makes Stoicism human. It accepts the Cosmos and it obeys the Purpose; therefore there is a Cosmos, and there is a purpose in the world. Stoicism, like much of ancient thought at this period, was permeated by the new discoveries of astronomy and their formation into a coherent scientific system, which remained unshaken till the days of Copernicus. The stars, which had always moved men's wonder and even worship, were now seen and proved to be no wandering fires but parts of an immense and apparently eternal order. One star might differ from another star in glory, but they were all alike in their obedience to law. They had their fixed courses, divine though they were, which had been laid down for them by a Being greater than they. The Order, or Cosmos, was a proven fact; therefore, the Purpose was a proven fact; and, though in its completeness inscrutable, it could at least in part be divined from the fact that all these varied and eternal splendours had for their centre our Earth and its ephemeral master. The Purpose, though it is not our Purpose, is especially concerned with us and circles round us. It is the purpose of a God who loves Man. Let us forget that this system of astronomy has been overthrown, and that we now know that Man is not the centre of the universe. Let us forget that the majestic order which reigns, or seems to reign, among the stars, is matched by a brutal conflict and a chaos of jarring purposes in the realms of those sciences which deal with life.[98:1] If we can recover the imaginative outlook of the generations which stretched from, say, Meton in the fifth century before Christ to Copernicus in the sixteenth after, we shall be able to understand the spiritual exaltation with which men like Zeno or Poseidonius regarded the world. We are part of an Order, a Cosmos, which we see to be infinitely above our comprehension but which we know to be an expression of love for Man; what can we do but accept it, not with resignation but with enthusiasm, and offer to it with pride any sacrifice which it may demand of us. It is a glory to suffer for such an end.