Self-examination, self-training, daily advance in virtue, ultimate calm and peace—these were the moral habits and the attainable goals which the later Stoics tried to teach their age. Moreover the Stoic doctrine of the community between the divine and the human reason gave a dignity to man; cut off from activity in the political world he realized that he was dwelling in a world in which God and men were the citizens, that he shared in that divine polity, free in the freedom which his relationship to God gave him. Between man and God for the Stoic there was no gulf fixed; on the contrary as Seneca wrote his younger friend: “God is near you, with you, within you. This I say, Lucilius: a holy spirit sits within us, watcher of our good and evil deeds, and guardian over us. Even as we treat him, he treats us. No man is good without God. Can any one rise superior to fortune save with God’s help?”[283] A nobler concept of the worship of the gods and of man’s duty toward them arose: not by the lighting of lamps, the giving of gifts, the slaying of bullocks, or visitations to the temples were the gods to be worshipped, but by a recognition of their true nature and goodness, by rendering to them again their perfect justice, and by ascribing to them constant praise.[284] In the contemplation of God alone and in loving obedience to his commands lay the means of freeing the mind from sorrow, fear, desire, envy, avarice, and every base thought, and of securing that peace which no Caesar but only God could give.[285]