Mr. C. P. Parker gave a very interesting talk before the Religious Union in Holden Chapel last night on the Stoic poet, Cleanthes. Cleanthes was by profession an athlete or boxer who lived in Athens in the time of Euclid and Archimedes. He was not by profession a poet, but when he came to Athens he soon saw that there was something better to live for than boxing. So he put himself under the instruction of Zeno, a Stoic philosopher. But since he was a poor man he was obliged to work nearly all night to support himself. He was summoned before the Areopagus because he had no visible means of support, but when the council learned the true state of affairs, they commended him and made him a present, which Zeno forbade him to accept. Cleanthes was different from most of the philosophers of that time, in that he did not care for fanciful syllogisms and high sounding logic, but he was a quiet man who did a good deal of thinking. He was known among his contemporaries as "The Ass." His biographer, after enumerating all his stupidities, ends his account rather curiously by saying, "he left many beautiful books."

Cleanthes's philosophy is a mixture of materialism and idealism, a study of physics and of metaphysics, coming to many remarkable conclusiouns and differing not much from that of other Stoics. But he strikes some very true notes and shows us that he was of an observing and scientific temperament. He was impressed with the harmonies and beauties of the world and found it easier to express his ideas in poetry than in philosophy. He was a true poet and a true philosopher and may truly be said to have been one of the founders of the Stoic School.