As reason was the only thing whereby Nature had distinguished man
from other creatures, to live the rational life was to follow Nature.
Nature was at once the law of God and the law for man. For by the
nature of anything was meant, not that which we actually find it to
be, but that which in the eternal fitness of things it was obviously
intended to become.
To be happy then was to be virtuous, to be virtuous was to be
rational, to be rational was to follow Nature, and to follow Nature
was to obey God. Virtue imparted to life that even flow in which Zeno
declared happiness to consist. This was attained when one's own
genius was in harmony with the will that disposed of all things.
Virtue having been purified from all the dross of the emotions, came
out as something purely intellectual, so that the Stoics agreed with
the Socratic conception that virtue is knowledge. They also took on
from Plato the four cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Temperance, Courage,
and Justice, and defined them as so many branches of knowledge.
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