order to the parts and the whole. But man, too, man, who is a part of this mighty machine, man, too, is endowed with reason, and hence it is his business also to diffuse law and order as far as his power can reach; and this he does, or this at least he ought to do, by striving to act in conformity with the laws of his own being, with the laws by which social order is preserved and promoted, and the laws by which God's universe is regulated and maintained. The individual man is thus like a small peg or pivot in some gigantic machine, which small pivot has to attend to and govern itself, first, in reference to its own structure; secondly, in reference to the parts of the machine with which it is more immediately in contact; and, thirdly, in reference to the whole machine to which it belongs. When this is done, then, and then only, does this small peg or pivot fulfil the end for which it was designed by the creator of the machine; and when man demeans himself in an analogous manner, then, and then only, does he fulfil the end for which he was designed by the great Artificer of that mighty machine called the universe; then, and only then, is his virtue perfect and his happiness secured.
9. The exposition which I gave you yesterday of the leading principles of the Stoical ethics, may enable you to understand those strong and somewhat startling assertions which have been called by Cicero and others the Paradoxes of the Stoics. It will be
