control of legislation first into the hands of a party, and then into the hands of the most active or the most numerous section of that party. But the part of a party may be, and probably is, a mere fraction of the nation. The principle of the Referendum, on the other hand, is to place, at any rate as regards important legislation, parties, factions, and sections under the control of the national majority. The creation of a popular veto is open .. to grave objections. The consideration, however, which, more than any other, may commend it to the favourable attention of thoughtful men, is its tendency to revive, in democratic societies, the idea which the influence of partisanship threatens with death, that allegiance to party must, in the minds of good citizens, yield to the claims of loyalty to the nation.' The language here cited is as true in 1910 as in 1890perhaps truer. To contented parliamentarians in office it naturally seems that all is going on for the best under the best of all possible Constitutions, and that the Referendum is as odious as it is unnecessary. But a different view may as naturally present itself to observers who stand quite outside parliamentary life and have taken no hand in the party game as played at Westminster. Such men are no more dogmatic democrats than is Lord Morley. But to them it seems that evils which in 1890 were latent in the party system have now become a patent disease which threatens to destroy the healthiness of English public life and the welfare of England. Such observers are no worshippers of democracy, but they acknowledge the existence of popular government and the democratic spirit. They hold that the worst form of popular government is democracy corrupted by the party system. They know as well as any one that the more or less mechanical devices of Constitution makers, or Constitution menders, can, however ingenious, never accomplish as much good as is always expected by its inventors from political machinery. But these critics of the English party system are convinced that the heart of England is sound, and hope that the veto of the nation may, if once constituted and honestly used, rescue the Constitution from the perils with which it is threatened. A. V. DICEY. * Contemporary Review,' April 1890, pp. 310, 511. 12 Art. 11. ANCIENT AND MODERN STOICISM. 1. La morale stoïcienne en face de la morale chrétienne. By l'Abbé A. Chollet. Paris: Lethielleux, 1898. 2. The Religion of Plutarch, a Pagan Creed of Apostolic Times. By J. Oakesmith. London: Longmans, 1902. 3. Die Stoa. By Paul Barth. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1903. 4. Stoic and Christian in the Second Century. By Leonard Alston. London: Longmans, 1906. 5. Silanus the Christian. By Edwin A. Abbott. London: Black, 1906. 6. The Stoic Creed. By William L. Davidson. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1907. 7. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to himself. By Gerald H. Rendall. London: Macmillan, 1901. 8. The Creed of a Layman; Apologia pro Fide Mea. By Frederic Harrison. London: Macmillan, 1907. And other works. IT is related that, when Pope Leo XIII was in articulo mortis, his memory failed him, and his mind fastened on childhood and youth. Then those about him heard him repeating the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It is one instance out of many of the persistent influence of Stoicism and its undiminished fascination for the noble-minded of any creed, or no creed, in almost every age or country in the civilised world. In its modern form it has become, to use an expression of Amiel, 'the last resource of doubt,' the evangel of those who have lost their faith in the supernatural, a kind of refuge from religious despair. Matthew Arnold, in one of his Essays in Criticism,' and Prof. Abbott, in his recent work on 'Silanus the Christian,' following the lines of M. Renan's matchless presentation of M. Aurelius and his time, have endeavoured to estimate the relative importance of Stoicism and Christianity as the two great moving forces in the regeneration of the Roman world. Others of more recent date have dwelt on the special claims of Stoicism as a system of ethics, its pathetic appeal to the autonomy of conscience, its peremptory command to live by law' and to follow nature, at a time when the religious sanctions of morality no longer exercise unquestioned authority. The scientific temper of mind which refuses to ac knowledge any other guide but reason, readily turns to the rationalistic and critical theory of the universe offered by Stoicism as a philosophy of life. The agnostic, again, finds in it a more congenial view of the universe than that offered by any of the religions, for, like him, the Stoics found in the progress towards virtue a sufficient end in existence.' In its materialistic spiritualism and pantheistic mysticism, its implicit trust in the world-order and belief in moral evolution, in its yearning for the simple life, the mediocritas aurea'plain living and high thinking-we note a further blending of Stoic conceptions and modern modes of thought; while in its altruistic cosmopolitanism, regard ing humanity as a living organism, and in its humani tarian sociology, it is in close touch with Positivism, or the Religion of human duty.' Another modern creed, or philosophy, which finds a kindred spirit in Stoicism is what is called pragmatism, which makes the value of truth depend on its application. Stoicism sets up an exalted sense of duty against the apathy of nescience, and so, somewhat like pragmatism, becomes a working hypothesis for practically disposed minds, for all those who, with the Stoic in the purple, resolve to do the work in hand with scrupulous and unaffected dignity, affectionately, freely, justly.' Prof Huxley, in one of his letters, speaks of Stocism as his 'Grin-and-bear-it philosophy'; and its appeal to common sense has a bracing effect on character and conduct. In what M. Renan calls its 'frénésie de renoncement, its resolute protest against self-indulgence and selfseeking, it endeavours to counteract the corroding effects of modern scepticism and cynicism in private and public life. And still to-day, as on its original appearance, it bears traces of the influence of Oriental modes of thought. Hence the tinge of sadness and resignation in its specula tions, so that even in its eudæmonistic aspirations it seeks no other satisfaction than that which comes from the sense of fulfilled duty. Such, in brief, is modern Stoicism as a philosophy of life, appearing and reappearing at different epochs of intellectual restlessness consequent upon the unsettle ment of religious convictions; and as such it made its mark at different times, notably at the period of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the French Revolution. Montaigne reads Plutarch' since he speaks French' (i.e. in Amyot's translation), and sees in Seneca a kindred spirit, ondoyant et divers,' like himself; and he speaks of the works of both these writers as the prime and cream of philosophy.' Erasmus, as Lord Acton reminds us, esteemed Seneca more highly than any Christian divines, and among other diligent students of the same writer were Zwingli and Calvin. In the seventeenth century Epictetus is held in such high esteem among the orthodox that a saying is ascribed to a devout German warrior that it were well if no other books existed besides the Holy Scriptures except Seneca and Epictetus, since these two would put to shame professed Christians, who failed in everyday life to reach their high standard of holiness. François de la Mothe-le-Vayer, a religious sceptic, is a disciple of Epictetus; and Leibnitz accuses Spinoza of having revived Stoicism in his ethic. Justus Lipsius and Lord Herbert of Cherbury are under stoical influence; and M. Faguet sees traces of it in the great French tragedians. From Roman Stoicism Rousseau and The Saints of the Encyclopædia' learn their own glorification of Nature; and, as J. R. Green points out in one of his letters, from it the leaders of the Revolution derive their stern severity in applying its principles to political life. Pope's Essay on Man,' as a characteristic production of the eighteenth century, has been described as 'Stoicism in verse'; and finally, in the 'Prelude' Wordsworth speaks like a Stoic of The calm existence that is mine When I am worthy of myself!' thus keeping up its continuity, as an ideal to satisfy the needs of the spiritual life, almost down to our own age. And its part is still conspicuous in the present day. As in its first appearance in the world, it still offers fixed principles of thought and action to minds and wills paralysed by doubt. Thus the late J. Addington Symonds, speaking of the need of a deep firm faith to escape from the misery of scepticism, says: 6 In these difficulties I fall back on a kind of stoical mysticism -on the prayer of Cleanthes, the proem of Goethe's "Gott Vol. 212.-No. 423. 2 P und die Welt," the phrase of Faust, "Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren," the almost brutal optimism of Walt Whitman's "I cry to the Cosmos, "Though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee.'" Can a religion be constructed out of these elements? Not a tangible one, perhaps; nothing communicable to another heart. But a religious mood of mind may be engendered sufficient for the purpose of living not ignobly." This is the very essence of modern Stoicism, and similar thoughts may be read between the lines of Paul Heyse's tragedy of Hadrian, which serves to show how Stoicism dignified the old Imperialism, whilst Emerson's writings are full of stoical optimism and the enthusiasm for the passionless state of the philosophic mind in the midst of the whirlpool of modern life. So, too, the academic school of poetry in France yearns with Aubrey de Vere in this country for the 'soul's marmoreal calmness'; and Maeterlinck, assuming for the nonce the toga of the Roman Stoic in the proud self-contained determination to become a law unto himself, says in 'Wisdom and Destiny': 'Let us not forget that it is from the very non-morality of destiny that a nobler morality must spring into life; for here, as everywhere, man is never so strong with his own native strength as when he realises that he stands entirely alone.' All the moderns are in search of 'composure and ethical fortitude' amid the turmoil of a restless environment. Overpowered by a sense of the insignificance of life and the vastness of the engulfing Cosmos, in the face of so many enigmas which defy solution, they feel what the apostle of philosophic calm' expresses in the following lines written in Kensington Gardens: 'Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine The will to neither strive nor cry, Sainte-Beuve, Arnold's ideal critic, says of himself that, after attaining what he had hoped for in life, and as it approached its termination, 'I sought to arrange my AL |