Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/485

 CHAP. I. NEW BELIEFS PHILOSOPHY. 47& The Stoics returned to politics. Zeno, Clcanthes, and Chrysippus wrote numerous treatises on the government of states. But their principles were far removed from the old municipal politics. These are the terms in which one of the ancients speaks of the doctrines which their writings contained: "Zeno, in his treatise on government, has undertaken to show us that we are not the inhabitants of such a deme, or such a city, separated from each other by a particular code, or exclusive laws, but that we should see citizens in all men, as if we all belonged to the same deme and the same city." ' We see from this how far ideas had advanced since the age of Socrates, who thought himself bound to adore, as far as he was able, the gods of the state. Even Plato did not plan any other government than that of a city. Zeno passed beyond these narrow limits of human associations. He dis- dained the divisions which the religion of ancient ages had established. As he believed in a God of the universe, so he had also the idea of a State into which the whole human race should enter,* But here is a still newer principle. Stoicism, by enlarging human association, emancipates the indi- vidual. As it rejects the religion of the city, it re- jects also the servitude of the citizen. It no longer desires that the individual man shall bo sacrificed to the state. It distinguishes and separates clearly what ought to remain free in man, and frees at least the conscience. It tells man that he ought to shut ' Pseudo Plutarch, FoHune of Alexander, 1. Marciam, 4, De Tranquillitate, 14 ; by Plutarch, De Exsilio ; by Marcus Aurelius : " As Antoninus, I have Rome for my country ; AS a man, the world."
 * The idea of the universal city is expressed by Seneca, ad