Modern literature of the nobler sort has many a Stoic note; and we ought to be able to recognise it in its modern as well as in its ancient dress. The very best brief expression of the Stoic creed is found in Henley's Lines to R. T. H. B.:--
"Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
"Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me unafraid.
"It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."
The chief modern type of Stoicism, however, is Matthew Arnold. His great remedy for the ills of which life is so full is stated in the concluding lines of "The Youth of Man":--
"While the locks are yet brown on thy head, While the soul still looks through thine eyes, While the heart still pours The mantling blood to thy cheek, Sink, O youth, in thy soul! Yearn to the greatness of Nature; Rally the good in the depths of thyself!"
If now we know the two fundamental principles of Stoicism, the indifference of external circumstance as compared with the reaction of our own thought upon it, and the sanctification of our thought by self-surrender to the universal law; and if we have learned to recognise these Stoic notes alike in ancient and modern prose and poetry, we are ready to discriminate between the good in it which we wish to cherish, and the shortcomings of the system which it is well for us to avoid.
We can all reduce enormously our troubles and vexations by bringing to bear upon them the two Stoic formulas. Toward material things, toward impersonal events at least, we may all with profit put on the Stoic armour, or to use the figure of the turtle, which is most expressive of the Stoic attitude, we can all draw the soft sensitive flesh of our feelings inside the hard shell of resolute thoughts. There is a way of looking at our poverty, our plainness of feature, our lack of mental brilliancy, our humble social estate, our unpopularity, our physical ailments, which, instead of making us miserable, will make us modest, contented, cheerful, serene. The mistakes that we make, the foolish words we say, the unfortunate investments into which we get drawn, the failures we experience, all may be transformed by the Stoic formula into spurs to greater effort and stimulus to wiser deeds in days to come. Simply to shift the emphasis from the dead external fact beyond our control, to the live option which always presents itself within; and to know that the circumstance that can make us miserable simply does not exist, unless it exists by our consent within our own minds;--this is a lesson well worth spending an hour with the Stoics to learn once for all.