that a professor of it might be none the less esteemed as a philosopher, for acting, now and then, as an ordinary man. He evidently thought that Zeno was not to be blamed, but rather commended, for showing, occasionally, that he did not wish to be thought too austere. The dogmas of this philosophy were public professions, but did not alter the heart, and control the whole life. It was powerless, as a moral lever, to raise the people. The masses remained idolatrous and deeply superstitious. Indeed the philosophers themselves conformed to the prevailing worship, and were not free from the prevailing superstitions. As ethical reformers, they seemed to have despaired of raising men, except in small numbers, to a better state. We look in vain for evidences of a wide-spread philanthropy. In fact, the system was one of egoïsm; and beginning in self, inculcating trust on self, it had no wide grasp of the duty and love, which men owe one to another, as children of a common Father. If from Athens we go to Rome, and notice the effect produced when Stoic influence was at its highest point and most wide-spread, we are saddened by a similar absence of evidence that it effected any great amelioration. We are led to see the truth of Niebuhr’s remarks[30] respecting the state of the community, upon which Stoicism had exerted all its power. “Viewed as a national, or political history, the history of the Roman Empire is sad and discouraging in the last degree. We see that things had come to a point, at which no earthly power could afford any help: we now have the development of dead powers instead of that of a vital energy.” The age of the greatest fame of Rome, when Augustus ruled her destinies, and her power and wealth and wide-spread influence were so vast, was not a happy one for the people. There was no fellowship between men, uniting them in feeling and for mutual benefit. Perhaps half the people were slaves and degraded, in the midst of surrounding splendour. Arnold[31] has well described the moral deficiency; “There were no public hospitals, no institutions for the relief of the infirm and poor, no societies for the improvement of the condition of mankind, from motives of charity. Nothing was done to promote the instruction of the lower classes, nothing to mitigate the evils of domestic slavery. Charity and general philanthropy were so little regarded as duties, that it requires a very extensive acquaintance with the literature of the time to find any allusion to them.” As long as it had an influence, Stoicism taught men rather to bear the evils of life with indifference, than to get rid of the evils that were in the world, by schemes for the social happiness and moral elevation of the people. So that superstition and grossest idolatry were rampant, and vices of the most lamentable kind were indulged in, almost without producing any shame.