Third: What seems evil to the individual is good for the whole: and since we are members of the whole is good for us. "Must my leg be lamed?" the Stoic asks. "Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg find fault with the world? Wilt thou not willingly surrender it for the whole? Know you not how small a part you are compared with the whole?"
"If a good man had foreknowledge of what would happen, he would coöperate toward his own sickness and death and mutilation, since he knows that these things are assigned to him according to the universal arrangement, and that the whole is superior to the part."
Fourth: Trial brings out our best qualities, is "stuff to try the soul's strength on," and "educe the man," as Browning puts it. This interpretation of evil as a means of bringing out the higher moral qualities, though not peculiar to Stoicism, was very congenial to their system, and appears frequently in their writings. "Just as we must understand when it is said that Æsculapius prescribed to this man horse exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, so we must understand it when it is said that the nature of the universe prescribed to this man disease, or mutilation, or loss of anything of the kind." "Calamity is the touchstone of a brave mind, that resolves to live and die master of itself. Adversity is the better for us all, for it is God's mercy to show the world their errors, and that the things they fear and covet are neither good nor evil, being the common and promiscuous lot of good men and bad."
A good test of one's appreciation of the Stoic position is whether or not one can see the measure of truth their paradoxes contain.
The first paradox is that there are no degrees in vice. In the words of the Stoic, "The man who is a hundred furlongs from Canopus, and the man who is only one, are both equally not in Canopus."
One of the few bits of moral counsel which I remember from the infant class in the Sunday-school runs as follows:--
"It is a sin To steal a pin: Much more to steal A greater thing."
This, in spite of its exquisite lyrical expression, the Stoic would flatly deny. The theft of a pin, and the defalcation of a bank cashier for a hundred thousand dollars; a cross word to a dog, and a course of conduct which breaks a woman's heart, are from the Stoic standpoint precisely on a level. For it is not the consequences but the form of our action that is the important thing. It is not how we make other people feel as a result of our act, but how we ourselves think of it, as we propose to do it, or after it is done, that determines its goodness or badness. If I steal a pin, I violate the universal law just as clearly and absolutely as though I stole the hundred thousand dollars. I can no more look with deliberate approval on the cross word to a dog, than on the breaking of a woman's heart. There are things that do not admit of degrees. We must either fire our gun off or not fire it. We cannot fire part of the charge. We want either an absolutely good egg for breakfast, or no egg at all. One that is partially good, or on the line between goodness and badness, we send back as altogether bad. If there is a little round hole in a pane of glass, cut by a bullet, we reject the whole pane as imperfect, just as though a big jagged hole had been made in it by a brickbat. We get an echo of this paradox in the statement of St. James, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all."