Stoics, that perfect rectitude of conduct which constituted the essence of virtue. This was what they called to live consistently, to live ac|cording to nature, and to obey those laws and directions which nature or the author of na|ture had prescribed for our conduct.
So far the Stoical idea of propriety and virtue is not very different from that of Aristotle and the antient peripatetics. What chiefly distin|guished those two systems from one another was the different degrees of self-command which they required. The peripatetics allowed of some degree of perturbation as suitable to the weakness of human nature, and as useful to so imperfect a creature as man. If his own mis|fortune excited no passionate grief, if his own injuries called forth no violent resentment, rea|son, or a regard to the general rules which deter|mined what was right and fit to done, would commonly, they thought, be too weak to prompt him to avoid the one or to beat off the other. The Stoics, on the contrary, de|manded the most perfect apathy, and re|garded every emotion that could in the smal|lest degree disturb the tranquility of the mind, as the effect of levity and folly. The Peri|patetics seem to have thought that no passion exceeded the bounds of propriety as long as
