=314.= From the religious standpoint virtue is willing cooperation with the deity, in preference to that unwilling cooperation to which even evil-doers are forced. This conception, first set forth by Cleanthes in a poem that we have quoted above[78], is enforced by Seneca and Epictetus also in varying phrases. ‘I do not obey God,’ says Seneca, ‘I agree with him. I go with him heart and soul, and not because I must[79].’ With a slight change of language this leads us to the paradox that ‘obedience to God is liberty[80].’ ‘I have placed my impulses,’ says Epictetus, ‘in obedience to God. Is it his will that I shall have fever? It is my will too. Is it his will that I should obtain anything? It is my wish also. Does he not wish it? I do not wish it[81].’ The personal bent of Epictetus leads him to develope this idea in the direction of suffering rather than of acting. ‘If the good man had foreknowledge of what would happen, he would cooperate towards his own sickness and death and mutilation, since he knows that these things are assigned to him in accordance with the universal arrangement[82].’ The proof that this must be so rests on the unity of the Divine and individual purposes: ‘Good cannot be one thing, and that at which we are rationally delighted another thing[83].’ [Sidenote: Social duty.] =315.= It is not perhaps quite so clearly stated that the virtue of the individual is that disposition which will make him the best possible member of society, that is, the best possible citizen of the Cosmopolis. Yet this is everywhere implied. In the first place the wise man will take part in the life of the community[84], he will marry and bring up children[85]. In the second place the virtue of man differs first from the corresponding quality in the animals in that man is formed by nature for social union; hence his reason only comes into play simultaneously with the recognition that he is a member of a community, and as such bound to prefer the good of the whole to that of a part. ‘Nature,’ says Panaetius, ‘through reason unites man to man, so that they have a common bond in conversation and life; it induces men to approve and take part in public gatherings and festivals, and to collect the materials for a social and cultivated life for themselves, their children, and all whom they hold dear[86].’ [Sidenote: Health of soul.]