The system of the Stoics, with its stern and, consequently, impracticable theory of morals, its doctrine of absolute necessity and blind fatalism, announces itself at once as identical with an austere rationalism. At the same time, under the teaching of the Epicureans, a soft and effeminate naturalism became almost universally prevalent. And while, in another and newer form, it gradually assumed the place of the old mythical heathenism, which daily fell more and more into neglect and disrepute, it still retained the old heathen sentiment, and a careless and undisturbed indifference in inactive bliss and self-enjoyment, as it was even ascribed and imputed to the gods, was introduced into life, and extolled as the true wisdom. Thus, then, while on the one hand the foundation was laid for that insensibility with which the wide-spreading and growing corruption and the approach of the general ruin were contemplated, so, on the other hand, the apathy of the Stoics was not exactly the right kind of sentiment to furnish a check or counteractive to this sybaritic indifference. As concerns the relations of public life, the social community, and the state, the Stoical doctrine appears, no doubt, in a worthier and a better light. On this account it numbered among its adherents almost all the great statesmen that lived from the last times of the Republic down to the later centuries of the Empire. Considered, however, in themselves, and scientifically regarded, both systems must be looked upon simply as the last chemical decomposing process, or the initiatory putrifying state of all higher science and philosophical reflection among the Greeks. On the whole, then, we conclude that Grecian science and philosophy have exercised no influence at all on life, or at least, either a very inadequate, or such as has proved radically baneful and pernicious.