The incompleteness of the Stoic position is precisely this tendency to slight and ignore the external conditions out of which life is made. Its God is fate. Instead of a living, loving will, manifest in the struggle with present conditions, Stoicism sees only an impersonal law, rigid, fixed, fatal, unalterable, unimprovable, uncompanionable. Man's only freedom lies in unconditional surrender to what was long ago decreed. Of glad and original coöperation with its beneficent designs, thus helping to make the world happier and better than it could have been had not the universal will found and chosen just this individual me, to work freely for its improvement, Stoicism knows nothing. Its satisfaction is staked on a dead law to be obeyed, not a live will to be loved. Its ideal is a monotonous identity of law-abiding agents who differ from each other chiefly in the names by which they chance to be designated. It has no place for the development of rich and varied individuality in each through intense, passionate devotion to other individuals as widely different as age, sex, training, and temperament can make them. Before we find the perfect guidance of life we must look beyond the Stoic as well as the Epicurean, to Plato, to Aristotle, and, above all, to Jesus. CHAPTER III THE PLATONIC SUBORDINATION OF LOWER TO HIGHER I THE NATURE OF VIRTUE Epicureanism tells us how to gain pleasure; Stoicism tells us how to bear pain. But life is not so simple as these systems assume. It is not merely the problem of getting all the pleasure we can; nor of taking pain in such wise that it does not hurt. It is a question of the worth of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of the things we suffer for. Plato squarely attacks that larger problem. He says that the Epicurean is like a musician who tunes his violin as much as he can without breaking the strings. The wise musician, on the contrary, recognises that the tuning is merely incidental to the music; and that when you have tuned it up to a certain point, it is worse than useless to go on tuning it any more. Just as the tuning is for the sake of the music, and when you have reached a point where the instrument gives perfect music, you must stop the tuning and begin to play; so when you have brought any particular pleasure, say that of eating, up to a certain point, you must stop eating, and begin to live the life for the sake of which you eat. To the Stoic Plato gives a similar answer. The Stoic, he says, is like a physician who gives his patient all the medicine he can, and prides himself on being a better physician than others because he gives his patients bigger doses, and more of them. The wise physician gives medicine up to a certain point, and then stops. That point is determined by the health, which the medicine is given to promote. Precisely so, it is foolish to bear all the pain we can, and boast ourselves of our ability to swallow big doses of tribulation and