In this extension of the moral theory, besides the desire for scientific completeness, the endeavour may also be observed to subordinate all sides of human activity to moral considerations. In the virtuous man, as the Stoics held, everything becomes virtue; [760] and hence everything is included in moral philosophy. Thereby, without doubt, the Stoic School contributed in no small degree towards settling and defining moral ideas, not only for its immediate contemporaries, but also for all subsequent times. Nevertheless, the more the teaching of the School entered into the details of every-day life, the more impossible it became to prevent practical considerations from overriding the natural severity of Stoic principles, or to keep the strictness of scientific procedure from yielding to considerations of experience. The order and division which the Stoics adopted for discussing details in the hortatory part of moral science are not known to us; nor, indeed, is it known whether that order was uniform in all cases. [761] It will be most convenient for the purpose of our present description to distinguish, in the first place, those points which refer to the moral activity of the individual as such, and afterwards to go on to those which relate to social life. Subsequently, the teaching of the Stoics on the relation of man to the course of the world and to necessity will engage our attention. [A. The individual.] [(1) Importance attached to the individual.] It was in keeping with the whole tone of the Stoic system to devote, in ethics, more attention to the conduct and duties of the individual than had been done by previous philosophy. Not that previous philosophers had altogether ignored this side. Indeed, Aristotle, in his investigations into individual virtue, had been led to enquire carefully into individual morality. Still, with Aristotle, the influence of classic antiquity on the border-land of which he stands was sufficiently strong to throw the individual into the background as compared with the community, and to subordinate ethics to politics. In the post-Aristotelian philosophy, this relation was exactly reversed. With the decline of public life in Greece, intellectual interest in the state declined also; and, in equal degree, the personality of the individual and circumstances of private life came into prominence. This feature may be already noticed in some of the older Schools, for instance, in the Academy and Peripatetic School. The Peripatetic, in particular, had, in the time of its first adherents, travelled far on the road which the founder had struck out. Among the Stoics, the same feature was required by the whole spirit of their system. If happiness depends upon man’s internal state and nothing external has power to affect it, the science which professes to lead man to happiness must primarily busy itself with man’s moral nature. It can only consider human society in as far as action for society forms part of the moral