"
This power of _endurance_ is completely the keynote of the Stoical view
of life, and the method of attaining to it, by practising contempt for
all external accidents, is constantly inculcated. I have already told
the anecdote about Agrippinus by which Epictetus admiringly shows that
no extreme of necessary misfortune could wring from the true Stoic a
single expression of indignation or of sorrow.
The inevitable, then, in the view of the Stoics, comes from God, and it
is our duty not to murmur against it. But this being the guiding
conception as regards ourselves, how are we to treat others? Here, too,
our duties spring directly from our relation to God. It is that relation
which makes us reverence ourselves, it is that which should make us
honour others. "Slave! will you not bear with your own brother, who, has
God for his father no less than you? But they are wicked,
perhaps--thieves and murderers. Be it so, then they deserve all the more
pity. You don't exterminate the blind or deaf because of their
misfortunes, but you pity them: and how much more to be pitied are
wicked men? Don't execrate them.
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