[681] On the other hand, the foolish man is altogether foolish, unhappy, and perverse; or, in the expressive language of the Stoics, every foolish man is a madman, he being a madman who has no knowledge of himself, nor of what most closely affects him. [682] [(2) Universal depravity.] This assertion is all the more trenchant because the Stoics recognised neither virtue nor wisdom outside their own system or one closely related to it, and because they took a most unfavourable view of the moral condition of their fellow-men. That they should do so was inevitable from their point of view. A system which sets up its own moral idea against current notions so sharply as that of the Stoics can only be the offspring of a thorough disapproval of existing circumstances, and must, on the other hand, contribute thereto. According to the Stoic standard, by far the majority, indeed, almost the whole of mankind, belong to the class of the foolish. If all foolish people are equally and altogether bad, mankind must have seemed to them to be a sea of corruption and vice, from which, at best, but a few swimmers emerge at spots widely apart. [683] Man passes his life—such had already been the complaint of Cleanthes [684]—in wickedness. Only here and there does one, in the evening of life, after many wanderings, attain to virtue. And that this was the common opinion among the successors of Cleanthes, is witnessed by their constant complaints of the depravity of the foolish, and of the rare occurrence of a wise man. [685] No one probably has expressed this opinion more frequently or more strongly than Seneca. We are wicked, he says; we have been wicked; we shall be wicked. Our ancestors complained of the decline of morals; we complain of their decline; and posterity will utter the very same complaint. The limits within which morality oscillates are not far asunder; the modes in which vice shows itself change, but its power remains the same. [686] All men are wicked; and he who has as yet done nothing wicked is at least in a condition to do it. All are thankless, avaricious, cowardly, impious; all are mad. [687] We have all done wrong—one in a less, the other in a greater degree; and we shall all do wrong to the end of the chapter. [688] One drives the other into folly, and the foolish are too numerous to allow the individual to improve. [689] He who would be angry with the vices of men, instead of pitying their faults, would never stop. So great is the amount of iniquity! [690]