In this picture of the wise man, the moral idealism of the Stoic system attained its zenith. A virtuous will appears here so completely sundered from all outward conditions of life, so wholly free from all the trammels of natural existence, and the individual has become so completely the organ of universal law, that it may be asked, What right has such a being to call himself a person? How can such a being be imagined as a man living among fellow-men? Nor was this question unknown to the Stoics themselves. Unless they are willing to allow that their theory was practically impossible, and their ideal scientifically untenable, how could they escape the necessity of showing that it might be reconciled with the wants of human life and the conditions of reality? Let the attempt be once made, however, and withal they would be forced to look for some means of adapting it to those very feelings and opinions towards which their animosity had formerly been so great. Nor could the attempt be long delayed. Daily a greater value was attached to the practical working of their system, and to its agreement with general opinion. The original direction of Stoic morality aimed at the absolute and unconditional submission of the individual to the law of the universe, yet, in developing that theory, the rights of the individual asserted themselves unmistakably. From this confluence of opposite currents arose a deviation from the rigid type of the Stoic system, some varieties of which, in the direction of the ordinary view of life, deserve now further consideration. CHAPTER XI. THE STOIC THEORY OF MORALS AS MODIFIED BY PRACTICAL NEEDS. [A. Things to be preferred and eschewed.]