=142.= Aurelius was no teacher of Stoicism in his time: his thoughts are addressed to himself alone[145]. But the happy accident that has preserved this work, which for nine centuries was lost to sight[146], enables us to obtain a view of this philosophy from which otherwise we should have been shut out. We do not go to Aurelius to learn what Stoic doctrine was; this is taken for granted throughout the book; but we can see here how it affected a man in whom the intellectual outlook was after all foreshortened by sympathies and yearnings which had grown up in his nature. The traditional criticism of the school as being harsh, unsympathetic, unfeeling, breaks to pieces as we read these ‘thoughts’; rather we find an excess of emotion, a surrender to human weakness. A study of Stoicism based on the works of Aurelius alone would indeed give us but a one-sided picture; but a study in which they were omitted would certainly lack completeness. He is also our last authority. In the centuries which succeeded, other waves of philosophic thought washed over Stoicism, and contended in turn with more than one religion which pressed in from the East. Yet for a long time to come Stoic principles were faithfully inculcated in thousands of Roman homes, and young men taught in childhood to model their behaviour upon the example of Zeno, Cleanthes, and Epictetus formed the salt of the Roman world. If in riper years they joined, in ever increasing numbers, the Christian church, they brought with them something which the world could not afford to lose. FOOTNOTES [1] Dill, _Roman Society_, p. 340. [2] ‘omnis natura habet quasi viam quandam et sectam quam sequatur’ Cic. _N. D._ ii 22, 57. ‘est tuae prudentiae sequi eius auctoritatem, cuius sectam atque imperium secutus es’ _ad Fam._ xiii 4, 2. ‘The sense of the word has been obscured by a false popular etymology which has connected the word with the Latin _secare_ ‘to cut,’ Skeat, _Etymological Dictionary_, p. 537. [3] See above, § 111. [4] ‘dicebat modesta Diogenes et sobria’ A. Gellius _N. A._ vi (vii) 14, 10. [5] For a full account of his life and teaching see Schmekel, _Philosophie der mittleren Stoa_, pp. 1-9. [6] Strabo xiv 5, 16. [7] Ind. Stoic. Herc. col. 51. [8] ‘discipulus Antipatri Panaetius’ Cic. _Div._ i 3, 6. [9] ‘credamus igitur Panaetio a Platone suo dissentienti? quem omnibus locis divinum, quem sapientissimum, quem sanctissimum, quem Homerum philosophorum appellat’ _Tusc. disp._ i 32, 79. [10] _Fin._ iv 28, 79. [11] ‘tristitiam atque asperitatem fugiens Panaetius nec acerbitatem sententiarum nec disserendi spinas probavit’ _ib._ [12] ἦν γὰρ ἰσχυρῶς φιλοπλάτων καὶ φιλοαριστοτέλης, ἀ[λλὰ κ]αὶ παρ[ενέδ]ωκε τῶν Ζηνων[είω]ν τι δι[ὰ τὴ]ν Ἀκαδημίαν καὶ [τὸν Περίπ]ατον. Ind. Herc. col. 61, quoted by Schmekel, p. 379. [13] ‘quam vellem Panaetium nostrum nobiscum haberemus! qui cum cetera, tum haec caelestia vel studiosissime solet quaerere’ Cic. _Rep._ i 10, 15.