Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/65

 strongest" present at the Olympian Games, the author of the "Ethics" is one of the "Combatants" who have been crowned, because they have descended into the arena, and by right action have secured what is noble and good in life. After Aristotle, it was improbable that Philosophy would ever again render itself obnoxious to the reproach levelled against Plato by some of his contemporaries that "they went to him expecting to hear about the chief good, but he put them off with a quantity of remarks about numbers and things they could not understand."

Contemporary with the work of Aristotle and his insistence upon the necessity that each individual man should seek for the chief good in the sphere of his own actual experience, occurred the relaxation of the dominant claims of the State to the best part of the energies and activities of the citizen. The change in the political condition of Greece consequent upon the Macedonian conquest had turned the Greek citizen back upon his own soul for inspiration to guide his steps aright. The philosophical tendency was thus aided by external conditions, and the joint operation of both these influences established in Stoicism and Epicureanism the satisfaction of the moral requirements of the individual man as the aim and end of Philosophy.

Whatever importance the leaders of the Stoics attached to Logic and Physics—and different philosophers formed different estimates of their value —all