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424 obviously ideal. Horace has ridiculed the wise and perfect man of the Stoics in these words:

But Horace has here construed their abstract man into the concrete. They do not affirm that their pattern man ever existed on the earth; and therefore, when Horace remarks that all the magnificent virtues and high-sounding pretensions of this perfect sage are scattered to the winds by an attack of phlegm, they might have retorted that they had taken care never to place him in a situation where there was any danger of his catching cold.

5. In regard to the first of the conformities now spoken of, namely, the conformity with the law of our own nature, I have just to remark that there is a close consonance, indeed an absolute coincidence, between this doctrine and that propounded by Socrates, Plato, and Butler, in regard to the government of the passions. Aristotle also teaches the same doctrine. Both Plato and Aristotle set forth reason as the born ruler of the passions. They hold, that the law of our nature is not conformed to, but is violated, when this relation is reversed, and when the passions get the upper hand. Indeed, so universal is this doctrine that it is promulgated in every system; and, as we saw yesterday, Shakespeare, without any