Greek philosophy has undoubtedly the merit of bringing out into clear conception this purely human and natural society. It thus expressed in language the work of Alexander, and still more the work of the Roman empire, as it was to be; and more than this, it herein supplied a point of future contact with Christian morality. The advance from the narrowness of the Greek mind in its proud rejection of all non-hellenic nations, and no less from the revolting selfishness of Roman conquest, is remarkable. And it is an advance of philosophic thought. As the older thinkers considered the political life of the city to be an immediate demand of human nature, so the Stoics considered the unitedness of man as a whole together, the dilatation of the particular political community to the whole race, in the same light. Its ground was the common possession of reason. The common law which ruled this human commonwealth was to live according to the dictation of reason, that is, according to nature, in which therefore virtue consists,(464) being one and the same in God and in man, and in them alone.(465) Such virtue branches into four parts, the prudence which discerns and practises the truth; the justice which assigns his own to each; the courage which prevails over all difficulties; the self-restraint and order which preserves temperance in all things. These being bound up together cover the whole moral domain, and embrace all those relations within which human society moves, and, as having their root in the moral nature of man, are a duty to everyone. This human commonwealth enfolds in idea the whole earth. It is the society of man with man. But it closes with this life. It has no respect to anything beyond. It was the Stoics who most completely worked out this system of moral philosophy; who urged the duty of man’s obedience to nature, of his voluntary subjection to that one universal law and power which held all things from the highest to the lowest in its grasp; and who likewise most absolutely cut him off from any personal existence in a future state. The virtue in which they placed his happiness was to be complete in itself; it was the work of man without any assistance on the part of God.(466) It made man equal to God. It found its reward in itself. If it was objected that the highest virtue in this life sometimes met with the greatest disasters, sorrows, pains, and bereavements, the system had no reply to this mystery. It did not attempt to assert a recompense beyond the grave.