In all these questions the moral character of Stoic piety is ever to the fore, and great pains were taken by the Stoics to bring their belief in prophecy into harmony with their philosophic view of the world. Nevertheless, it is clear that success could not be theirs either in making this attempt, or indeed in dealing with any other parts of the popular belief. Struggling with indefatigable zeal in an attempt so hopeless, they proved at least the sincerity of their wish to reconcile religion and philosophy; but they also disclosed by these endeavours a misgiving that science, which had put on so bold a face, was not in itself sufficient, but needed support from the traditions of religion, and from a belief in divine revelations. [1030] Probably we shall not be far wrong in referring to this practical need the seeming vagaries of men like Chrysippus, who, with the clearest intellectual powers, could be blind to the folly of the methods they adopted in defending untenable and antiquated opinions. These vagaries show in Stoicism practical interests preponderating over science. They also establish the connection of Stoicism with Schools which doubted altogether the truth of the understanding, and thought to supplement it by divine revelations. Thus the Stoic theory of divination leads directly to the Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic doctrine of revelation. CHAPTER XIV. THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY AS A WHOLE AND ITS HISTORICAL POSITION. [A. Inner connection of the Stoic system.] Having now investigated the Stoic system in detail, we are in a position to pass a definite judgment on the scope of the Stoic philosophy, the import and the relation of its various parts, and its historical position. Its peculiar character manifests itself before all things in the three points to which attention was drawn at the outset: [1031]—its pre-eminently practical tone, the determination of this practical tendency by the notions of the good and of virtue, and the use of logic and natural science as a scientific basis. Speculative knowledge is not, as we have seen, to the Stoics an end in itself, but only a means for producing a right moral attitude; all philosophical research stands directly or indirectly in the service of virtue. Both in the earlier and in the later days of its existence the Stoic School advocated this principle in the most determined and exclusive manner, nor was it even denied by Chrysippus, the chief representative of its science and learning. [(1) Ethical side of Stoicism.]