Guide To Stoicism by Stock, St. George William Joseph, 1850
Guide To Stoicism by Stock, St. George William Joseph, 1850
Guide To Stoicism by Stock, St. George William Joseph, 1850
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE BOOK OF STOICISM ***
A GUIDE TO STOICISM
FOREWORD
ST GEORGE STOCK M A
_Pemb. Coll. Oxford_
A GUIDE TO STOICISM.
ST GEORGE STOCK
Among the Greeks and Romans of the classical age philosophy occupied
the place taken by religion among ourselves. Their appeal was to
reason not to revelation. To what, asks Cicero in his Offices, are we
to look for training in virtue, if not to philosophy? Now, if truth
is believed to rest upon authority it is natural that it should be
impressed upon the mind from the earliest age, since the essential
thing is that it should be believed, but a truth which makes its
appeal to reason must be content to wait till reason is developed. We
are born into the Eastern, Western or Anglican communion or some
other denomination, but it was of his own free choice that the
serious minded young Greek or Roman embraced the tenets of one of the
great sects which divided the world of philosophy. The motive which
led him to do so in the first instance may have been merely the
influence of a friend or a discourse from some eloquent speaker, but
the choice once made was his own choice, and he adhered to it as
such. Conversions from one sect to another were of quite rare
occurrence. A certain Dionysius of Heraclea, who went over from the
Stoics to the Cyrenaics, was ever afterward known as "the deserter."
It was as difficult to be independent in philosophy as it is with us
to be independent in politics. When a young man joined a school, he
committed himself to all its opinions, not only as to the end of
life, which was the main point of division, but as to all questions
on all subjects. The Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics from
the Epicurean; he differed also in his theology and his physics and
his metaphysics. Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought young men
"unfit to hear moral philosophy". And yet it was a question--or
rather the question--of moral philosophy, the answer to which decided
the young man's opinions on all other points. The language which
Cicero sometimes uses about the seriousness of the choice made in
early life and how a young man gets entrammelled by a school before
he is really able to judge, reminds us of what we hear said nowadays
about the danger of a young man's taking orders before his opinions
are formed. To this it was replied that a young man only exercised
the right of private judgment in selecting the authority whom he
should follow, and, having once done that, trusted to him for all the
rest. With the analogue of this contention also we are familiar in
modern times. Cicero allows that there would be something in it, if
the selection of the true philosopher did not above all things
require the philosophic mind. But in those days it was probably the
case, as it is now, that, if a man did not form speculative opinions
in youth, the pressure of affairs would not leave him leisure to do
so later.
The life span of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was from B.C. 347 to
275. He did not begin teaching till 315, at the mature age of forty.
Aristotle had passed away in 322, and with him closed the great
constructive era of Greek thought. The Ionian philosophers had
speculated on the physical constitution of the universe, the
Pythagoreans on the mystical properties of numbers; Heraclitus had
propounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Leucippus had
struck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raised
questions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all the
freedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically worked
them out. The later schools did not add much to the body of
philosophy. What they did was to emphasize different sides of the
doctrine of their predecessors and to drive views to their logical
consequences. The great lesson of Greek philosophy is that it is
worth while to do right irrespective of reward and punishment and
regardless of the shortness of life. This lesson the Stoics so
enforced by the earnestness of their lives and the influence of their
moral teaching that it has become associated more particularly with
them. Cicero, though he always classed himself as an Academic,
exclaims in one place that he is afraid the Stoics are the only
philosophers, and whenever he is combating Epicureanism his language
is that of a Stoic. Some of Vergil's most eloquent passages seem to
be inspired by Stoic speculation. Even Horace, despite his banter
about the sage, in his serious moods borrows the language of the
Stoics. It was they who inspired the highest flights of declamatory
eloquence in Persius and Juvenal. Their moral philosophy affected the
world through Roman law, the great masters of which were brought up
under its influence. So all pervasive indeed was this moral
philosophy of the Stoics that it was read by the Jews of Alexandria
into Moses under the veil of allegory and was declared to be the
inner meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Stoics then did not
add much to the body of Philosophy, they did a great work in
popularising it and bringing it to bear upon life.
The Greeks were all agreed that there was an end or aim of life, and
that it was to be called 'happiness,' but at that point their
agreement ended. As to the nature of happiness there was the utmost
variety of opinion. Democritus had made it consist in mental
serenity, Anaxagoras in speculation, Socrates in wisdom, Aristotle in
the practise of virtue with some amount of favour from fortune,
Aristippus simply in pleasure. These were opinions of the
philosophers. But, besides these, there were the opinions of ordinary
men, as shown by their lives rather than by their language. Zeno's
contribution to thought on the subject does not at first sight appear
illuminating. He said that the end was 'to live consistently,' the
implication doubtless being that no life but the passionless life of
reason could ultimately be consistent with itself. Cleanthes, his
immediate successor in the school, is credited with having added the
words 'with nature,' thus completing the well-known Stoic formula
that the end is 'to live consistently with nature.'
It was assumed by the Greeks that the ways of nature were 'the ways
of pleasantness,' and that 'all her paths' were 'peace.' This may
seem to us a startling assumption, but that is because we do not mean
by 'nature' the same thing as they did. We connect the term with the
origin of a thing, they connected it rather with the end; by the
'natural state' we mean a state of savagery, they meant the highest
civilization; we mean by a thing's nature what it is or has been,
they meant what it ought to become under the most favourable
conditions; not the sour crab, but the mellow glory of the Hesperides
worthy to be guarded by a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks the
natural apple. Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that the State is
a natural product, because it is evolved out of social relations
which exist by nature. Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous term to
the Greeks no less than to ourselves, but in the sense with which we
are now concerned, the nature of anything was defined by the
Peripatetics as 'the end of its becoming.' Another definition of
theirs puts the matter still more clearly. 'What each thing is when
its growth has been completed, that we declare to be the nature of
each thing'.
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY.
The last words are worth noting as showing that even with Chrysippus
who has been called the intellectual founder of Stoicism the whole
stress of the philosophy of the Porch fell upon its moral teaching.
It was a favourite metaphor with the school to compare philosophy to
a fertile vineyard or orchard. Ethic was the good fruit, physic the
tall plants, and logic the strong wall. The wall existed only to
guard the trees, and the trees only to produce the fruit. Or again
philosophy was likened to an egg of which ethic was the yolk
containing the chick, physic the white which formed its nourishment
while logic was the hard outside shell. Posidonius, a later member of
the school, objected to the metaphor from the vineyard on the ground
that the fruit and the trees and the wall were all separable whereas
the parts of philosophy were inseparable. He preferred therefore to
liken it to a living organism, logic being the bones and sinews,
physic the flesh and blood, but ethic the soul.
LOGIC
But if the Stoics were strong in logic they were weak in rhetoric.
This strength and weakness were characteristic of the school at all
periods. Cato is the only Roman Stoic to whom Cicero accords the
praise of real eloquence. In the dying accents of the school as we
hear them in Marcus Aurelius the imperial sage counts it a thing to
be thankful for that he had learnt to abstain from rhetoric, poetic,
and elegance of diction. The reader however cannot help wishing that
he had taken some means to diminish the crabbedness of his style. If
a lesson were wanted in the importance of sacrificing to the Graces
it might be found in the fact that the early Stoic writers despite
their logical subtlety have all perished and that their remains have
to be sought for so largely in the pages of Cicero. In speaking of
logic as one of the three departments of philosophy we must bear in
mind that the term was one of much wider meaning than it is with us.
It included rhetoric, poetic, and grammar as well as dialectic or
logic proper, to say nothing of disquisitions on the senses and the
intellect which we should now refer to psychology.
The criterion of truth then was no other than the gripping phantasy.
Such at least was the doctrine of the earlier Stoics, but the later
added a saving clause, "when there is no impediment." For they were
pressed by their opponents with such imaginary cases as that of
Admetus, seeing his wife before him in very deed, and yet not
believing it to be her. But here there was an impediment. Admetus did
not believe that the dead could rise. Again Menelaus did not believe
in the real Helen when he found her on the island of Pharos. But here
again there was an impediment. For Menelaus could not have been
expected to know that he had been for ten years fighting for a
phantom. When, however, there was no such impediment, then they said
the gripping phantasy did indeed deserve its name, for it almost took
men by the hair of the head and dragged them to assent.
Out of the general ideas which nature imparts to us, reason was
perfected about the age of fourteen, at the time when the voice--its
outward and visible sign--attains its full development, and when the
human animal is complete in other respects as being able to reproduce
its kind. Thus reason which united us to the gods was not, according
to the Stoics, a pre-existent principal, but a gradual development
out of sense. It might truly be said that with them the senses were
the intellect.
But the bodiless would not be thus conjured out of existence. For
what was to be made of such things as the meaning of words, time,
place, and the infinite void? Even the Stoics did not assign body to
these, and yet they had to be recognized and spoken of. The
difficulty was got over by the invention of the higher category of
somewhat, which should include both body and the bodiless. Time was a
somewhat, and so was space, though neither of them possessed being.
The chain argument which we wrongly call the Sorites was also a
favorite resource with the Stoics. If a single syllogism did not
suffice to argue men into virtue surely a condensed series must be
effectual. And so they demonstrated the sufficiency of wisdom for
happiness as follows----
The wise man is temperate
The temperate is constant
The constant is unperturbed
The unperturbed is free from sorrow
Whoso is free from sorrow is happy
The wise man is happy
The delight which the early Stoics took in this pure play of the
intellect led them to pounce with avidity upon the abundant stock of
fallacies current among the Greeks of their time. These seem--most of
them--to have been invented by the Megarians and especially by
Eubulides of Miletus a disciple of Eucleides but they became
associated with the Stoics both by friends and foes who either praise
their subtlety or deride their solemnity in dealing with them.
Chrysippus himself was not above propounding such sophisms as the
following--
Philetas of Cos am I
'Twas the Liar who made me die
And the bad nights caused thereby.
ETHIC
The Stoics we are told reckoned that there were eight parts of the
soul. These were the five senses, the organ of sound, the intellect
and the reproductive principle. The passions, it will be observed,
are conspicuous by their absence. For the Stoic theory was that the
passions were simply the intellect in a diseased state owing to the
perversions of falsehood. This is why the Stoics would not parley
with passion, conceiving that if once it were let into the citadel of
the soul it would supplant the rightful ruler. Passion and reason
were not two things which could be kept separate in which case it
might be hoped that reason would control passion, but were two states
of the same thing--a worse and a better.
While man was still in the merely animal stage, and before reason was
developed in him, the things that were in accordance with his nature
were such as health, strength, good bodily condition, soundness of
all the senses, beauty, swiftness--in short all the qualities that
went to make up richness of physical life and that contributed to the
vital harmony. These were called the first things in accordance with
nature. Their opposites were all contrary to nature, such as
sickness, weakness, mutilation. Under the first things in accordance
with nature came also congenial advantages of soul such as quickness
of intelligence, natural ability, industry, application, memory, and
the like. It was a question whether pleasure was to be included among
the number. Some members of the school evidently though that it might
be, but the orthodox opinion was that pleasure was a sort of
aftergrowth and that the direct pursuit of it was deleterious to the
organism. The after growths of virtue were joy, cheerfulness, and the
like. These were the gambolings of the spirit like the frolicsomeness
of an animal in the full flush of its vitality or like the blooming
of a plant. For one and the same power manifested itself in all ranks
of nature, only at each stage on a higher level. To the vegetative
powers of the plant the animal added sense and Impulse. It was in
accordance therefore with the nature of an animal to obey the
Impulses of sense, but to sense and Impulse man superadded reason so
that when he became conscious of himself as a rational being, it was
in accordance with his nature to let all his Impulses be shaped by
this new and master hand. Virtue was therefore pre-eminently in
accordance with nature. What then we must now ask is the relation of
reason to impulse as conceived by the Stoics? Is reason simply the
guiding, and impulse the motive power? Seneca protests against this
view, when impulse is identified with passion. One of his grounds for
doing so is that reason would be put on a level with passion, if the
two were equally necessary for action. But the question is begged by
the use of the word 'passion,' which was defined by the Stoics as 'an
excessive impulse.' Is it possible then, even on Stoic principles,
for reason to work without something different from itself to help
it? Or must we say that reason is itself a principle of action? Here
Plutarch comes to our aid, who tells us on the authority of
Chrysippus in his work on Law that impulse is 'the reason of man
commanding him to act,' and similarly that repulsion is 'prohibitive
reason.' This renders the Stoic position unmistakable, and we must
accomodate our minds to it in spite of its difficulties. Just as we
have seen already that reason is not something radically different
from sense, so now it appears that reason is not different from
impulse, but itself the perfected form of impulse. Whenever impulse
is not identical with reason--at least in a rational being--it is not
truly impulse, but passion.
Things were divided by Zeno into good, bad, and indifferent. To good
belonged virtue and what partook of virtue; to bad, vice and what
partook of vice. All other things were indifferent.
To the third class then belonged such things as life and death,
health and sickness, pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, strength
and weakness, honour and dishonour, wealth and poverty, victory and
defeat, nobility and baseness of birth.
The indifference of things other than virtue and vice was apparent
from the definition of good which made it essentially beneficial.
Such things as health and wealth might be beneficial or not according
to circumstances; they were therefore no more good than bad. Again,
nothing could be really good of which the good or ill depended on the
use made of it, but this was the case with things like health and
wealth.
The true and only good then was identical with what the Greeks called
'the beautiful' and what we call 'the right'. To say that a thing was
right was to say that it was good, and conversely to say that it was
good was to say that it was right; this absolute identity between the
good and the right and, on the other hand, between the bad and wrong,
was the head and front of the Stoic ethics. The right contained in
itself all that was necessary for the happy life, the wrong was the
only evil, and made men miserable whether they knew it or not.
To say that the good of men lay in virtue was another way of saying
that it lay in reason, since virtue was the perfection of reason.
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.
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.
Against these were set four cardinal vices of Folly, Intemperance,
Cowardice, and Injustice. Under both the virtues and vices there was
an elaborate classification of specific qualities. But
notwithstanding the care with which the Stoics divided and subdivided
the virtues, virtue, according to their doctrine, was all the time
one and indivisible. For virtue was simply reason and reason, if it
were there, must control every department of conduct alike. 'He who
has one virtue has all,' was a paradox with which the Greek thought
was already familiar. But Chrysippus went beyond this, declaring that
he who displayed one virtue did thereby display all. Neither was the
man perfect who did not possess all the virtues, nor was the act
perfect which did not involve them all. Where the virtues differed
from one another was merely in the order in which they put things.
Each was primarily itself, secondarily all the rest. Wisdom had to
determine what it was right to do, but this involved the other
virtues. Temperance had to impart stability to the impulses, but how
could the term 'temperate' be applied to a man who deserted his post
through cowardice, or who failed to return a deposit through avarice,
which is a form of injustice, or yet to one who misconducted affairs
through rashness, which falls under folly? Courage had to face
dangers and difficulties, but it was not courage unless its cause
were just. Indeed one of the ways in which courage was defined was a
virtue fighting on behalf of justice. Similarly justice put first the
assigning to each man his due, but in the act of doing so had to
bring in the other virtues. In short, it was the business of the man
of virtue to know and to do what ought to be done, for what ought to
be done implied wisdom in choice, courage in endurance, justice in
assignment and temperance in abiding by ones conviction. One virtue
never acted by itself, but always on the advice of a committee. The
obverse to this paradox--He who has one vice has all vices--was a
conclusion which the Stoics did not shrink from drawing. One might
lose part of one's Corinthian ware and still retain the rest, but to
lose one virtue--if virtue could be lost--would be to lose all along
with it.
From things good and bad we now turn to things indifferent. Hitherto
the Stoic doctrine has been stern and uncompromising. We have now to
look at it under a different aspect, and to see how it tried to
conciliate common sense.
By things indifferent were meant such as did not necessarily
contribute to virtue, for instance health, wealth, strength, and
honor. It is possible to have all these and not be virtuous, it is
possible also to be virtuous without them. But we have now to learn
that though these things are neither good nor evil, and are therefore
not matter for choice or avoidance, they are far from being
indifferent in the sense of arousing neither impulse nor repulsion.
There are things indeed that are indifferent in the latter sense,
such as whether you put out your finger this way or that, whether you
stoop to pick up a straw or not, whether the number of hairs on your
head be odd or even. But things of this sort are exceptional. The
bulk of things other than virtue and vice do arouse in us either
impulse or repulsion. Let it be understood then that there are two
senses of the word indifferent--
(1) neither good nor bad
(2) neither awaking impulse nor repulsion
All things that were in accordance with nature had 'value' and all
things that were contrary to nature had what we must call 'disvalue'.
In the highest sense indeed of the term 'value'--namely that of
absolute value or worth--things indifferent did not possess any value
at all. But still there might be assigned to them what Antipater
expressed by the term 'a selective value' or what he expressed by its
barbarous privative, 'a disselective disvalue'. If a thing possessed
a selective value you took that thing rather than its contrary,
supposing that circumstances allowed, for instance, health rather
than sickness, wealth rather than poverty, life rather than death.
Hence such things were called takeable and their contraries
untakeable. Things that possessed a high degree of value were called
preferred, those that possessed a high degree of disvalue were called
rejected. Such as possessed no considerable degree of either were
neither preferred nor rejected. Zeno, with whom these names
originated, justified their use about things really indifferent on
the ground that at court "preferment" could not be bestowed upon the
king himself, but only on his ministers.
In this way all mundane and marketable goods, after having been
solemnly refused admittance by the Stoics at the front door, were
smuggled in at a kind of tradesman's entrance under the name of
things indifferent. We must now see how they had, as it were, two
moral codes, one for the sage and the other for the world in general.
The sage alone could act rightly, but other people might perform "the
proprieties." Any one might honor his parents, but the sage alone did
it as the outcome of wisdom, because he alone possessed the art of
life, the peculiar work of which was to do everything that was done
as the result of the best disposition. All the acts of the sage were
"perfect proprieties," which were called "rightnesses." All acts of
all other men were sins or "wrongnesses." At their best they could
only be "intermediate proprieties." The term "propriety," then, is a
generic one. But, as often happens, the generic term got determined
in use to a specific meaning, so that intermediate acts are commonly
spoken of as "proprieties" in opposition to "rightnesses." Instances
of "rightnesses" are displaying wisdom and dealing justly, instances
of proprieties or intermediate acts are marrying, going on an
embassy, and dialectic.
The word "duty" is often employed to translate the Greek term which
we are rendering by "propriety." Any translation is no more than a
choice of evils, since we have no real equivalent for the term. It
was applicable not merely to human conduct, but also to the acting of
the lower animals, and even to the growth of plants. Now, apart from
a craze of generalization we should hardly think of the "stern
daughter of the voice of God" in connection with an amoeba
corresponding successfully to stimulus, yet the creature in its
inchoate way is exhibiting a dim analogy to duty. The term in
question was first used by Zeno, and was explained by him, in
accordance with its etymology, to mean what it came to one to do, so
that as far as this goes, 'becomingness' would be the most
appropriate translation.
Seneca is fond of contrasting the sage with the proficient. The sage
is like a man in the enjoyment of perfect health. But the proficient
is like a man recovering from a severe illness, with whom an
abatement of the paroxysm is equivalent to health, and who is always
in danger of a relapse. It is the business of philosophy to provide
for the needs of these weaker brethren. The proficient is still
called a fool, but it is pointed out that he is a very different kind
of fool from the rest. Further, proficients are arranged into three
classes, in a way that reminds one of the technicalities of
Calvinistic theology. First of all, there are those who are near
wisdom, but, however near they may be to the door of Heaven, they are
still on the wrong side of it. According to some doctors, these were
already safe from backsliding, differing from the sage only in not
having yet realized that they had attained to knowledge; other
authorities, however, refused to admit this, and regarded the first
class as being exempt only from settled diseases of the soul, but not
from passing attacks of passion. Thus did the Stoics differ among
themselves as to the doctrine of "final assurance". The second class
consisted of those who had laid aside the worst diseases and passions
of the soul, but might at any moment relapse into them. The third
class was of those who had escaped one mental malady but not another;
who had conquered lust, let us say, but not ambition; who disregarded
death, but dreaded pain, This third class, adds Seneca, is by no
means to be despised.
Another glaring paradox of the Stoics is that "All faults are equal".
They took their stand upon a mathematical conception of rectitude. An
angle must be either a right angle or not, a line must be either
straight or crooked, so an act must be either right or wrong. There
is no mean between the two and there are no degrees of either. To sin
is to cross the line. When once that has been done it makes no
difference to the offense how far you go. Trespassing at all is
forbidden. This doctrine was defended by the Stoics on account of its
bracing moral effect as showing the heinousness of sin. Horace gives
the judgment of the world in saying that common sense and morality,
to say nothing of utility, revolt against it.
Here are some other specimens of the Stoic paradoxes. "Every fool is
mad". "Only the sage is free and every fool is a slave". "The sage
alone is wealthy". "Good men are always happy and bad men always
miserable". "All goods are equal". "No one is wiser or happier than
another". But may not one man we ask be more nearly wise or more
nearly happy than another? "That may be", the Stoics would reply,
"but the man who is only one stade from Canopus is as much not in
Canopus as the man who is a hundred stades off; and the eight day old
puppy is still as blind as on the day of its birth; nor can a man who
is near the surface of the sea breathe any more than if he were full
five hundred fathom down".
It is only fair to the Stoics to add that paradoxes were quite the
order of the day in Greece, though they greatly outdid other schools
in producing them. Socrates himself was the father of paradox.
Epicurus maintained as staunchly as any Stoic that "No wise man is
unhappy", and, if he be not belied, went the length of declaring that
the wise man, if put into the bull of Phalaris would exclaim: "How
delightful! How little I mind this!"
The good man of the Stoics was variously known as 'the sage', or,
'the serious man', the latter name being inherited from the
Peripatetics. We used to hear it said among ourselves that a person
had become serious, when he or she had taken to religion. Another
appellation which the Stoics had for the sage was 'the urbane man',
while the fool in contradistinction was called 'a boor'. Boorishness
was defined as an inexperience of the customs and laws of the state.
By the state was meant, not Athens or Sparta, as would have been the
case in a former age, but the society of all rational beings into
which the Stoics spiritualised the state. The sage alone had the
freedom of this city and the fool was therefore not only a boor, but
an alien or an exile. In this city, Justice was natural and not
conventional, for the law by which it was governed was the law of
right reason. The law then was spiritualised by the Stoics, just as
the state was. It no longer meant the enactments of this or that
community, but the mandates of the eternal reason which ruled the
world and which would prevail in the ideal state. Law was defined as
right reason commanding what was to be done and forbidding what was
not to be done. As such, it in no way differed from the impulse of
the sage himself.
As a member of society the sage would play his part in public life.
Theoretically this was always true, and practically he would do so,
wherever the actual constitution made any tolerable approach to the
ideal type. But, if the circumstances were such as to make it certain
that his embarking on politics would be of no service to his country,
and only a source of danger to himself, then he would refrain. The
kind of constitution of which the Stoics most approved was a mixed
government containing democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical
elements. Where circumstances allowed the sage would act as
legislator, and would educate mankind, one way of doing which was by
writing books which would prove of profit to the reader.
As being essentially a social being, the sage was endowed not only
with the graver political virtues, but also with the graces of life.
He was sociable, tactful and stimulating, using conversation as a
means for promoting good will and friendship; so far as might be, he
was all things to all men, which made him fascinating and charming,
insinuating and even wily; he know how to hit the point and to choose
the right moment, yet with it all he was plain and unostentatious and
simple and unaffected; in particular he never delighted in irony much
less in sarcasm.
One more touch has yet to be added to the apathy of the sage. He was
impervious to wonder. No miracle of nature could excite his
astonishment--no mephitic caverns, which men deemed the mouths of
hell, no deep-drawn ebb tides--the standing marvel of the
Mediterranean dweller, no hot springs, no spouting jets of fire.
There remains one more leading characteristic of the sage, the most
striking of them all, and the most important from the ethical point
of view. This was his innocence or harmlessness. He would not harm
others and was not to be harmed by them. For the Stoics believed with
Socrates that it was not permissible by the divine law for a better
man to be harmed by a worse. You could not harm the sage any more
than you could harm the sunlight; he was in our world, but not of it.
There was no possibility of evil for him, save in his own will, and
that you could not touch. And as the sage was beyond harm, so also
was he above insult. Men might disgrace themselves by their insolent
attitude towards his mild majesty, but it was not in their power to
disgrace him.
PHYSIC
We have now before us the main facts with regard to the Stoic view of
man's nature, but we have yet to see in what setting they were put.
What was the Stoic outlook upon the universe? The answer to this
question is supplied by their Physic.
There were then two first principles, but there were not two causes
of things. The active principle alone was cause, the other was mere
material for it to work on--inert, senseless, destitute in itself of
all shape and qualities, but ready to assume any qualities or shape.
The Stoics, it will be observed, used the term "matter" with the same
confusing ambiguity with which we use it ourselves, now for sensible
objects which have shape and other qualities, now for the abstract
conception of matter, which is devoid of all qualities.
An element was defined as that out of which things at first come into
being and into which they are at last resolved. In this relation did
the four elements stand to all the compound bodies which the universe
contained. The terms earth, air, fire and water had to be taken in a
wide sense: earth meaning all that was of the nature of earth, air
all that was of the nature of air and so on. Thus, in the human
frame, the bones and sinews pertained to earth.
While all compound bodies were resolvable into the four elements,
there were important differences among the elements, themselves. Two
of them, fire and air, were light; the other two, water and earth,
were heavy. By 'light' was meant that which tends away from its own
centre, by 'heavy,' that which, tends towards it. The two light
elements stood to the two heavy ones in much the same relation as the
active to the passive principle generally. But further, fire had such
a primary as entitles it, if the definition of element were pressed,
to be considered alone worthy of the name. For the three other
elements arose out of it and were to be again resolved into it.
When we say that the Stoics regarded the universe as a plenum, the
reader must understand by 'the universe' the Cosmos or ordered whole.
Within this there was no emptiness owing to the pressure of the
celestial upon the terrestrial sphere. But outside of this lay the
infinite void without beginning, middle, or end. This occupied a very
ambiguous position In their scheme. It was not being, for being was
confined to body and yet it was there. It was in fact nothing, and
that was why it was infinite. For as nothing cannot be bound to any
thing, so neither can there be any bound to nothing. But while
bodiless itself, it had the capacity to contain body, a fact which
enabled it, despite its non-entity, to serve, as we shall see, a
useful purpose.
The tendency of all things in the universe to the centre kept the
earth fixed in the middle as being subject to an equal pressure on
every side. The same cause also, according to Zeno, kept the universe
itself at rest in the void. But in an infinite void, it could make no
difference whether the whole were at rest or in motion. It may have
been a desire to escape the notion of a migratory whole which led
Zeno to broach the curious doctrine that the universe has no weight,
as being composed of elements whereof two are heavy and two are
light. Air and fire did indeed tend to the centre like everything
else in the cosmos, but not till they had reached their natural home.
Till then they were of an upward-growing nature. It appears then that
the upward and downward tendencies of the elements were held to
neutralise one another and to leave the universe devoid of weight.
The universe was the only thing which was perfect in itself, the one
thing which was an end in itself. All other things were perfect
indeed as parts, when considered with reference to the whole, but
were none of them ends in themselves, unless man could be deemed so
who was born to contemplate the universe and imitate its perfections.
Thus, then, did the Stoics envisage the universe on its physical
side--as one, finite, fixed in space, but revolving round its own
centre, earth, beautiful beyond all things, and perfect as a whole.
But it was impossible for this order and beauty to exist without
mind. The universe was pervaded by intelligence as man's body is
pervaded by his soul. But as the human soul though everywhere present
in the body is not present everywhere in the same degree, so it was
with the world-soul. The human soul presents itself not only as
intellect, but also in the lower manifestations of sense, growth, and
cohesion. It is the soul which is the cause of the plant life, which
displays itself more particularly in the nails and hair; it is the
soul also which causes cohesion among the parts of the solid
substances such as bones and sinews, that make up our frame. In the
same way the world-soul displayed itself in rational beings as
intellect, in the lower animals as mere souls, in plants as nature or
growth, and in inorganic substances as 'holding' or cohesion. To this
lowest stage add change, and you have growth or plant nature;
super-add to this phantasy and impulse and you rise to the soul of
irrational animals; at a yet higher stage you reach the rational and
discursive intellect, which is peculiar to man among mortal natures.
We have spoken of soul as the cause of the plant life in our bodies,
but plants were not admitted by the Stoics to be possessed of soul in
the strict sense. What animated them was 'nature' or, as we have
called it above, 'growth'. Nature, in this sense of the principle of
growth, was defined by the Stoics as 'a constructive fire, proceeding
in a regular way to production,' or 'a fiery spirit endowed with
artistic skill'. That Nature was an artist needed no proof, since it
was her handiwork that human art essayed to copy. But she was an
artist who combined the useful with the pleasant, aiming at once at
beauty and convenience. In the widest sense, Nature was another name
for Providence, or the principle which held the universe together,
but, as the term is now being employed, it stood for that degree of
existence which is above cohesion and below soul. From this point of
view, it was defined as "a cohesion subject to self originated change
in accordance with seminal reasons effecting and maintaining its
results in definite times, and reproducing in the offspring the
characteristics of the parent". This sounds about as abstract as
Herbert Spencer's definition of life, but it must be borne in mind
that nature was all the time a 'spirit', and as such a body. It was a
body of a less subtle essence than soul. Similarly, when the Stoics
spoke of cohesion, they are not to be taken as referring to some
abstract principle like attraction. 'Cohesions,' said Chrysippus,
'are nothing else than airs, for it is by these that bodies are held
together, and of the individual qualities of things which are held
together by cohesion, it is the air which is the compressing cause
which in iron is called "hardness", in stone "thickness" and in
solver "whiteness"'. Not only solidarity then, but also colours,
which Zeno called 'the first schematisms' of matter were regarded as
due to the mysterious agency of air. In fact, qualities in general
were but blasts and tensions of the air, which gave form and figure
to the inert matter underlying them.
As the man is in one sense the soul, in another the body, and in a
third the union of both, so it was with the cosmos. The word was used
in three senses--
(1) God
(2) the arrangement of the stars, etc.
(3) the combination of both.
Thus all the deities except Zeus were mortal, or at all events,
perishable. Gods, like men, were destined to have an end some day.
They would melt in the great furnace of being as though they were
made of wax or tin. Zeus then would be left alone with his own
thoughts, or as the Stoics sometimes put it, Zeus would fall back
upon Providence. For by Providence they meant the leading principle
or mind of the whole, and by Zeus, as distinguished from Providence,
this mind together with the cosmos, which was to it as body. In the
efflagration the two would be fused into one in the single substance
of aether. And then in the fulness of time there would be a
restitution of all things. Everything would come round regularly
again exactly as it had been before.
To us who have been taught to pant for progress, this seems a dreary
prospect. But the Stoics were consistent Optimists, and did not ask
for a change in what was best. They were content that the one drama
of existence should enjoy a perpetual run without perhaps too nice a
consideration for the actors. Death intermitted life, but did not end
it. For the candle of life, which was extinguished now, would be
kindled again hereafter. Being and not being came round in endless
succession for all save him, into whom all being was resolved, and
out of whom it emerged again, as from the vortex of some aeonian
Maelstrom.
CONCLUSION
The Stoics did not owe much to the Peripatetics. There was too much
balance about the master mind of Aristotle for their narrow
intensity. His recognition of the value of the passions was to them
an advocacy of disease in moderation: his admission of other elements
besides virtue into the conception of happiness seemed to them to be
a betrayal of the citadel, to say as he did that the exercise of
virtue was the highest good was no merit in their eyes, unless it
were added to the confession that there was none beside it. The
Stoics tried to treat man as a being of pure reason. The Peripatetics
would not shut their eyes to his mixed nature, and contended that the
good of such a being must also be mixed, containing in it elements
which had reference to the body and its environment. The goods of the
soul indeed, they said, far outweighed those of body and estate, but
still the latter had a right to be considered.
Modern works--
Von Arnim's edition of the "Fragmenta Stoicorum Veterum"
Pearson's "Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes" Pitt Press
Remains of C Musonius Rufus in the Teubner series
Zeller's "Stoics and Epicureans."
Sir Alexander Grant, "Ethics of Aristotle"
Essay VI on the Ancient Stoics
Lightfoot on the Philippians, Dissertation II,
"St. Paul and Seneca."
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