THREE:With Seneca and his contemporaries, Stoicism has shaken itself free from alien ingredients, and has become the accepted creed of the whole republican opposition, being especially pronounced in the writings of the two young poets, Persius and Lucan. But in proportion as naturalistic philosophy assumed the form of a protest against vice, luxury, inhumanity, despotism, and degradation, or of an exhortation to welcome death as a deliverance from those evils, in the same proportion did it tend to fall back into simple Cynicism; and on this side also it found a ready response, not only in the heroic fortitude, but also in the brutal coarseness and scurrility of the Roman character. Hence the Satires of the last great Roman poet, Juvenal, are an even more distinct expression of Cynic than the epic of Virgil had been of Stoic sentiment. Along with whatever was good and wholesome in Cynicism there is the shameless indecency of the Cynics, and their unquestioning acceptance of mendicancy and prostitution as convenient helps to leading a natural and easily contented life. And it may be noticed that the free-thinking tendencies which distinguished the Cynics from the Stoics are also displayed in Juvenals occasional denunciations of superstition."You remember the case of my wife?" Charlton asked suddenly. "Ah, I see you do. Well, I am going to tell you my story. You are a man of sentiment and feeling, or your novels greatly belie you. And a doctor always respects confidence. When my wife died there was an inquiry extending over many days. The great question was: Had she poisoned herself, did she take poison by misadventure, or did I kill her? Nine people out of every ten believed I was guilty. I let them believe it at the risk of my neck, and why?"
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