\a>
^equeatbefc to
Gbe library
of tbe
THnivereltp of Toronto
bB
Professor m 5. /IDilner
PHILOSOPHIES ANCIENT AND MODERN
STOICISM
NOTE
As a consequence of the success of the series of Religions
Ancient and Modern, Messrs. CONSTABLE have decided to issue
a set of similar primers, with brief introductions, lists of dates,
and selected authorities, presenting to the wider public the
salient features of the Philosophies of Greece and Rome and of
the Middle Ages, as well as of modern Europe. They will
appear in the same handy Shilling volumes, with neat cloth
bindings and paper envelopes, which have proved so attractive
in the case of the Religions. The writing in each case will be
confided to an eminent authority, and one who has already
proved himself capable of scholarly yet popular exposition
within a small compass.
Among the first volumes to appear will be :—
Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENN, author of The Philo
sophy of Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century.
Stoicism. By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of Deduc
tive Logic, editor of the Apology of Plato, etc.
Plato. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University,
author of The Problem oj Conduct.
Scholasticism. By Father RICKABY, S. J.
Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.
Comte and Mill. By T. W. WHITTAKER, author of The
Neoplatonists, Apollonius of Tyana and other Essays.
Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of An Intro
duction to Spencer's Philosophy.
Schopenhauer. By T. W. WHITTAKER.
Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASEK, D. C. L. , LL. D.
Bergsen. By Father TYRRELL.
\ n \
STOICISM
By
ST. GEORGE STOCK
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE fef CO LTD
1908
FOREWORD
As an adherent of the Peripatetic ^School myself,
I do not hold a brief for the Stoics, but I have
endeavoured to do them justice, and perhaps a
little more, not having been on the alert to rob
them of some borrowed plumes. The Porch has
been credited with a great deal that really be
longed to the Academy or the Lyceum. If you
strip Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful
misuse of language, what is left is simply the
moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
dashed with the physics of Heraclitus. Stoicism
was not so much a new doctrine as the form
under which the old Greek philosophy finally
presented itself to the world at large. It owed
its popularity in some measure to its extrava
gance. A great deal might be said about Stoicism
as a religion, and about the part it played in the
formation of Christianity, but these subjects were
excluded by the plan of this volume, which was
to present a sketch of the Stoic doctrine based
on the original authorities.
ST. GEOKGE STOCK, M.A.
Pemb. Coll. Oxford.
CONTENTS
PAGE
i. PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, . 1
n. DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY, . . 10
in. LOGIC, .... 15
iv. ETHIC, .... 37
v. PHYSIC, . . 75
vi. CONCLUSION, . . 93
DATES AND AUTHORITIES, . 107
-f
STOICISM
CHAPTER I
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
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 (ii. § 6), are we to look for training
in virtue, if not to philosophy ? The modern
mind answers: 'To religion.' 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
A I
STOICISM
great sects which divided the world of philo
sophy. 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 afterwards known as 'the deserter.'1
It was as difficult to be independent in philo
sophy 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
fromVthe Epicurean; he differed also in his
theology and his physics ''"aifcT 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
1 6 iLfraOtucvot, Diog. Laert. vii. § 166 ; cp. §§ 23, 37 : Cic.
Acail. Pr. ii. § 71 ; Fin. v. § 94.
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
the seriousness of the choice made in early life
and how a young man gets eri trammelled 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.1 To this it was replied
that the 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 philo
sopher did not above all things require the philo
sophic 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.
-•P16 life-spanj>f JSena, thg jQund[ez,Q£ Stoicism,
was frWl^a. 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 Pytha
goreans on the mystical properties of numbers,
1 Acad. Pr. §8: N.D. i. §66.
3
STOICISM
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 emphasise
different sides of the doctrine of their predeces
sors, and to drive views to their logical conse
quences. The grea£ksson_pfJGr^
is that it is 'worth while to do right, irrespective
^'r^irdTnd punishinentand jregardless of the
.flhortness^oflff£
forced by the earnestness of their lives and the
influence of their mora^ teaching, that it has-
become associatedlin^i 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, when
ever he is combating Epicureanism, his language
is that of a Stoic. Some of Vergil's most eloquent
passages seem to be inspired by Stoic specula
tion.1 Even Horace, despite his banter about the
sage, in his serious moods borrows the language
i Georg. iv. 219-227 ; Mv. vi. 724-751. Cp. D.L. vii. § 110 ;
Aug. C.D. xiv. 3.
4
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
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 in
fluence. 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 philo
sophy, they did a great work in popularising it
and bringing it to bear upon life.
An intense practicality was a mark of the later
Greek philosophy. This was common to Stoicism
with its rival Epicureanism. Both regarded
philosophy as ' the art of life,' though they differed
in- their conception of wha-t that art should be.
Widely as the two schools were opposed to one
another, they had also other features in common.
Both were children of an age in which the free
city had given way to monarchies, and personal
had taken the place of corporate life. The
question of happiness is no longer, as with
Aristotle, and still more with Plato, one for the
state, but for the individual. In both schools
the speculative interest was feeble from the first,
5
STOICISM
and tended to become feebler as time went on.
Both were new departures from pre-existent
schools. Stoicism was bred out of Cynicism, as
Epicureamsrn~ouF of Cyrenaicism. Both were
content to fall back lor their physics upon the
pre-Socratic schools, the one adopting the fire-
philosophy of Heraclitus, the other the atomic
theory of Dernocritus. Both were in strong re
action against the abstractions of Plato and
Aristotle, and would tolerate nothing but con
crete reality. The Stoics were quite as material
istic in their own way as the Epicureans. With
regard indeed to the nature of the "liighes't good
we may, with Seneca,1 represent the difference be
tween the two schools as a question of the senses
against the intellect, but we shall r see presently
that the Stoics regarded the, intellect itself as
being a kind of body.
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,2 Anaxagoras
1 Epist. 124, § 2 : quicumque voluptatem in summo ponuut,
sensibile indicant bonum : nos contra intellegibile, qui illud
animo damus.
2 Stob. ii. 76: D.L. ix. §45.
6
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
in speculation, Socrates in wisdom, Aristotle in
the practice 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/ 1
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
s the well-known Stoic formula, that the end is ' to {
I live consistently with nature.'2
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
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 132, TO bfj-oXoyov/uifrus £9)v.
2 Ibid. 134; D.L. vii. § 87, TO bfj.o\oyoi>fj.tvus TTJ <£i/<rei Ify.
Cic. Off. ii. § 13, convenienter naturae vivere.
7
STOICISM
meant the highest civilisation; we mean by a
thing's nature what it is or has been, they meant
what it ought to become under the most favour
able 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,1
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.' 2 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.' 3
Following out this conception the Stoics identi
fied a life in accordance with nature with a life in
accordance with the highest perfection to which
man could attain. Now, as man was essentially
a rational animal, his work as man lay in living
the rational life. And the perfection of reason
1 See the manifold definitions of it given in Arist. Met. iv. 4.
2 Arist. Met. iv. 4, § 7, ri> rAoj TTJS
3 Arist. Pol. i. 2, § 8.
8
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
was virtue. Hence the ways of nature were no
other than the ways of virtue. And so it came
about that the Stoic formula might be expressed
in a number of different ways, which yet all
amounted to the same thing. The end was to
live the virtuous life, or to live consistently, or
to live in accordance with nature, or to live
rationally.
The end of life then being the attainment of
happiness through virtue, how did philosophy
stand related to that end ? We have seen already
that it was regarded as ' the art of life.' Just as
medicine was the art of health, and the art of
sailing navigation, so there needed to be an art
of living. Was it reasonable that minor ends
should be attended to, and the supreme end
neglected ?
CHAPTER II
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY was defined by the Stoics as ' the
knowledge of things divine and human.' 1 It was
divided into three departments, logic, ethic, and
physic. This division indeed was in existence
before their time,2 but they have got the credit of
it, as of some other things which they did not
originate. Neither was it confined to them, but
was part of the common stock of thought. Even
the Epicureans, who are said to have rejected
logic, can hardly be counted as dissentients from
this threefold division. For what they did was to
substitute for the Stoic logic a logic of their own,3
dealing with the notions derived from sense,
much in the same way as Bacon substituted his
1 Cic. Fin. ii. § 37, Off. i. § 153 : Pint. 874 E, Plac. Phil. i.
ad init.
3 Arist. Top. i. 14, § 4 : Cic. Acad. Post., § 19 ; Fin. iv. § 4,
v. §9.
5 Sen. Ep. 89, § 11.
10
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY
Novurn Organum for the Organon of Aristotle.
Clean thes, we are told,1 recognised six parts of
philosophy, namely, dialectic, rhetoric, ethic,
politic, physic, and theology; but these are
obviously the result of subdivision of the primary
ones. Of the three departments we may say that
logic deals with the form and expression of know
ledge, physic with the matter of knowledge, and
ethic with the use of knowledge. The division
may also be justified in this way. Philosophy
must study either nature (including the divine
nature) or man; and, if it studies man, it must
regard him either from the side of the intellect or
of the feelings, that is, either as a thinking (logic)
or as an acting (ethic) being.
As to the order in which the different depart
ments should be studied, we have had preserved
to us the actual words of Chrysippus in his fourth
book on Lives.2 ' First of all then it seems to me
that, as has been rightly said by the ancients,
there are three heads under which the specula
tions of the philosopher fall, logic, ethic, physic ;
next, that of these the logical should come first,
the ethical second, and the physical third ; and
that of the physical the treatment of the gods
should come last, whence also they have given
1 D.L. vii. § 41. 2 Plut. 1035 A, B, Sto. Repug. 9.
II
STOICISM
the name of "completions"1 to the instruction
delivered on this subject.'2 That this order how
ever might yield to convenience is plain from
another book on the use of reason, where he says
that ' the student who takes up logic first need
not entirely abstain from the other branches of
philosophy, but should study them also as occasion
offers.3 3
Plutarch twits Chrysippus with inconsistency,
because, in the face of this declaration as to the
order of treatment, he nevertheless says that
morals rest upon physics. But to this charge it
may fairly be replied that the order of exposition
need not coincide with the order of existence.
Metaphysically speaking, morals may depend
upon physics, and the right conduct of man be
deducible from the structure of the universe, but
for all that it may be advisable to study physics
later. 'Physics' meant the nature of God and
the Universe. Our nature may be deducible
from that, but it is better known to ourselves to
start with, so that it may be well to begin from
the end of the stick that we have in our hands.
1 rcXerdj.
2 By this passage, aided by Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. § 22,
we are able to correct the statement of D.L. vii. § 40.
3 Pint. 1035 E, Sto. Repug. 9.
12
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY
But that Chrysippus did teach the logical de
pendence of morals on physics is plain from his
own words. In his third book on the Gods he
says: 'For it is not possible to find any other
origin of justice or mode of its generation, save
that from Zeus and the nature of the universe ;
for anything we have to say about good and evil
must needs derive its origin therefrom/ and again
in his Physical Theses : ' For there is no other or
more appropriate way of approaching the subject
of good and evil on the virtues or happiness than
from the nature of all things and the administra
tion of the universe ... for it is to these we
must attach the treatment of good and evil,
inasmuch as there is no better origin to which we
can refer them, and inasmuch as physical specula
tion is taken in solely with a view to the distinction
between good and evil.' l
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.
1 Plut. 1035 C, D, Sto. Repug. 9.
13
STOICISM
The Avail existed only to guard the trees, and the
trees only to produce the fruit.1 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.2
1 Philo, i. 302, De Agr. § 3, i. 589, Mut. Norn. 10 ; S. E.
adv. M. vii. § 17 ; D.L. vii. § 40.
- S. E. adv. M. vii. §§ 18, 19; D.L. vii. § 40, who
interchanges the places of physic and ethic.
CHAPTER III
LOGIC
THE Stoics had a tremendous reputation for logic.
In this department they were the successors, or
rather the supersessors, of Aristotle. For after
the death of Theophrastus the library of the
Lyceum is said to have been buried underground
at Scepsis until about a century before Christ.
So that the Organon may actually have been lost
to the world during that period. At all events
under Strato, the successor of Theophrastus, who
specialised in natural science, the school had lost
its comprehensiveness. Cicero l even finds it con
sonant with dramatic propriety to make Cato
charge the later Peripatetics with ignorance of
logic ! On the other hand, Chrysippus became
so famous for his logic as to create a general
impression that, if there were a logic among the
gods, it would be no other than the Chrysippean.2
1 Fin. iii. § 41. 2 Cic. Brut. § 118.
15
STOICISM
But, if the Stoics were strong in logic, they
were weak in rhetoric.1 This strength and weak
ness 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.2 The reader however cannot help wish
ing 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 depart
ments 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.
1 Cic. Brut. § 118, Paradoxa, Introd. § 2.
2 Marc. Ant. i. § 7.
16
LOGIC
The school, it has been said, was weak in
rhetoric. Nevertheless Cleanthes wrote an Art
of Rhetoric, and so did Chrysippus, but such as
Cicero could recommend to the perusal of any one
whose ambition was to hold his tongue.1 They
followed the well-established division of rhetoric
into deliberative, judicial, and demonstrative,
recognising that the ends of public speaking are
to sway the counsels of men, or to plead the
cause of justice, or to put forward some person
or thing as an object of praise or blame.2 Among
the requisites of the oratcr they enumerated
invention, style, arrangement, and delivery.3 A
fifth requisite, namely, memory, is usually added:4
for the other equipments are of little use to the
orator, if there be not memory to retain the
thought, language, and arrangement. Another
point on which the Stoics followed established
tradition was in the analysis of a speech into
preface, narration, controversial matter, and con
clusion.5
With regard to ' invention ' Cicero complains of
1 Fin. iv. § 7.
2 Arist. Rhet. i. 2, § 3, ad Alex. 2, § 1 ; D.L. vii. § 42 ; Cic.
Inv. i. § 7 ; Cornif. ad Herenn. i. 2, § 2. 3 D.L. vii. § 42.
4 Cic. Inv. i. § 9 ; Cornif. ad H. i. § 3 ; Philo, i. 652, Do
Somn. i. 35.
5 D.L. vii. § 42 ; Cic. Inv. i. § 19 ; Cornif. ad H. i. § 4.
B I/
STOICISM
the Stoics for their neglect of it as an art.1 They
had nothing corresponding to the topics of Aris
totle, to supply material for dialectic, nor any
orator's vade-mecum, such as the later 'Art' of
Hermagoras, which almost saved people the
trouble of thinking.
Logic as a whole being divided into rhetoric
and dialectic, rhetoric was denned to be 'the
knowledge of how to speak well in expository
discourses,' and dialectic as 'the knowledge of
how to argue rightly in matters of question and
answer.'2 Both rhetoric and dialectic were
spoken of by the Stoics as virtues; for they
divided virtue, in its most generic sense, in the
same way as they divided philosophy, into physi
cal, ethical, and logical.3 Rhetoric and dialectic
were thus the two species of logical virtue. Zeno
expressed their difference by comparing rhetoric
to the palm and dialectic to the fist.4
Instead of throwing in poetic and grammar
with rhetoric, the Stoics subdivided dialectic into
the part which dealt with the meaning and the
part which dealt with the sound, or, as Chrysippus
1 Fin. iv. § 10.
2 Sen. Ep. 89, § 17 ; D.L. vii. §§ 41, 42.
8 Cic. Acad. Post. § 5, cp. Pr. § 132 ; Pint. 874 E, Plac.
Phil. i. ad init. ; D.L. vii. § 92.
4 Cic. Fin. ii. § 17, Orat. § 113 ; Quint. Inst. ii. 20, § 7.
18
LOGIC
phrased it, concerning significants and significates.1
Under the former came the treatment of the
alphabet, of the parts of speech, of solecism, of
barbarism, of poems, of amphibolies, of metre and
music 2 — a list which seems at first sight a little
mixed, but in which we can recognise the general
features of grammar, with its departments of
phonology, accidence, and prosody. The treat
ment of solecism and barbarism in grammar
corresponded to that of fallacies in logic. With
regard to the alphabet it is worth noting that the
Stoics recognised seven vowels and six mutes.3
This is more correct than our way of talking of
nine mutes, since the aspirate consonants are
plainly not mute. There were, according to the
Stoics, five parts of speech— name, appellative,
verb, conjunction, article. 'Name' meant a
proper name, and ' appellative ' 4 a common term.
There were reckoned to be five virtues of speech
— Hellenism, clearness, conciseness, propriety, dis
tinction. By 'Hellenism' was meant speaking
good Greek. ' Distinction ' was defined to be ' a
diction which avoided homeliness.' 5 Over against
these there were two comprehensive vices, bar-
1 Sen. Ep. 89, § 17 ; D.L. vii. §§ 43, 62.
2 D.L. vii. § 44. 3 Ibid. § 57. 4 irpoffrjyopia, D.L. vii. § 58.
6 Ibid. 59, KaraffKcvij dt 6<m X<?£ts e/CTre^evyum rbv
19
STOICISM
barism and solecism, the one being an offence
against accidence, the other against syntax.
One does not associate the idea of poetry much
with the austere sect of the Stoics. Still it should
be remembered that the finest devotional utter
ance of Paganism is Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus,
and that Aratus among the Greeks, and among
the Romans Manilius, Seneca, Persius, and Juvenal
may be set down to the credit of the school.
Amphiboly was defined as 'diction which
signifies two or more things in the strict prose
sense of the terms and in the same language.' It
is thus a general name for ambiguity.1
We come now to that part of dialectic which
deals with the meaning, not with the expression,
and which answers to our logic. The Stoics were
far from taking that confined view of logic which
would limit it to mere consistency and deny its
relation to truth. They defined Dialectic as ' the
science of what is true and false, and what is
neither the one nor the other.' 2 Under the last
head would come a question. Ancient logic was
essentially concerned with this as being con-
1 The example given by D.L. vii. § 62 is avXyrpls
which may be read so as to mean (1) The house has fallen three
times ; (2) The flute-girl has had a fall. This is what Aristotle
would call the fallacy of division.
2 D.L. vii. §§42, 62.
20
LOGIC
ducted by way of question and answer. From
the wide point of view of the Stoic definition of
Dialectic, it is evident that the problem of the
canon and criterion of truth presents itself as
fundamental; and that definition also becomes
a matter of great importance as being concerned
with ascertaining the real nature of things. It
was by the criterion that the different reports of
the senses had to be corrected ; and if definitions
were not founded on true ideas, our grasp on
reality would be enfeebled from the first.1 With
the Stoics then, as with ourselves, the difficulties
of logic came at the beginning. They boldly
plunged into the subject with a disquisition on
sense-impressions, feeling that, if truth were to be
made good, it must be by reliance on the validity
of the senses.2 After that the topics come much
in our order. The treatment of sensation leads
up to that of notions, which are our concepts or
terms; then we have a disquisition on proposi
tions, their parts and varieties, very much dis
guised by strange phraseology ; then come moods
and syllogisms ; and last of all fallacies.3
1 D. L. vii. § 42.
2 Ibid., $ 49. Cicero, Acad. Pr. § 29, says that the criterion
of truth and the nature of the highest good are the two ques
tions of supreme importance in philosophy.
3 D. L. vii. § 43.
21
STOICISM
The famous comparison of the infant mind to
a blank sheet of paper, which we connect so
closely with the name of Locke, really comes
from the Stoics.1 The earliest characters in
scribed upon it were the impressions of sense,
which the Greeks called 'phantasies.' A phan
tasy was denned by Zeno as 'an impression in
the soul."2 Cleanthes was content to take this
definition in its literal sense, and believe that
the soul was impressed by external objects as
wax by a signet - ring.3 Chrysippus, however,
found a difficulty here, and preferred to interpret
the Master's saying to mean an alteration or
change in the soul.4 He figured to himself the
soul as receiving a modification from every ex
ternal object which acts upon it, just as the air
receives countless strokes when many people are
speaking at once.5 Further, he declared that in
receiving an impression the soul was purely
passive, and that the phantasy revealed, not only
its own existence, but that also of its cause, just
as light displays itself and the things that are
1 Plut. 900 B, Plac. 11.
2 ruTraxm tv ^vxv, D.L. vii. §§ 45, 50 ; S.E. adv. M. vii. 228,
230.
3 D. L. vii., § 45 ; S.E. adv. M. vii. 228, 372, viii. 400.
4 D. L. vii., § 50, dXXoioxm ; S.E. adv. M. vii. 230 crepotwffis.
5 S.E. adv. M. vii. 230, 231.
22
LOGIC
in it.1 Thus when through sight we receive an
impression of white, an affection takes place in
the soul, in virtue whereof we are able to say
that there exists a white object affecting us.
The power to name the object resides in the
understanding. First must come the phantasy,
and then the understanding, having the power
of utterance, expresses in speech the affection
it receives from the object. The cause of the
phantasy was called the ' phai.tast,' 2 e.g. the
white or cold object. If there is no external
cause, then the supposed object of the impression
was a ' phantasm/ such as a figure in a dream,
or the Furies whom Orestes sees in his frenzy.3
How then was the impression which had
reality behind it to be distinguished from that
which had not? 'By the feel' is all that the
Stoics really had to say in answer to this question.
Just as Hume made the difference between sense-
impressions and ideas to lie in the greater vivid
ness of the former, so did they ; only Hume saw
no necessity to go beyond the impression, whereas
the Stoics did. Certain impressions, they main
tained, carried with them an irresistible con-
1 Plut. 900 D, Plac. 11 ; cp. S.E. adv. M. vii. 162, 163.
2 Plut. 900 E, Plac. 12.
3 Eur. Great. 255-59.
23
STOICISM
viction of their own reality, and this, not merely
in the sense that they existed, but also that
they were referable to an external cause. These
were called ' gripping phantasies.' l Such a phan
tasy did not need proof of its own existence, or
of that of its object. It possessed self-evidence.2
Its occurrence was attended with yielding and
assent on the part of the soul.3 For it is as
natural for the soul to assent to the self-evident
as it is for it to pursue its proper good.4 The
assent to a gripping phantasy was called 'com
prehension/ as indicating the firm hold that the
soul thus took of reality.5 A gripping phantasy
was defined as ' one which was stamped and im
pressed from an existing object, in virtue of that
object itself, in such a way as it could not be
from a non-existent object.' 6 The clause ' in
1 KaToKrjTrTiKai <j>avTa<ricu. The name is ambiguous, and is
sometimes used in the sense of 'grippable,' being now referred
to the grasp of the object on the mind, and now to that of the
mind of the object. Cicero twice insists on the latter sense as
having been that of Zeno, Acad. Post. § 41 ; Pr. § 145. Cp.
Fin. iii. § 17, v. § 76 ; Acad. Pr. §§ 17, 31, 62.
2 Iv&pycta. Cic. Acad. Pr. § 17 ; Post. § 41 ; S.E. adv. M.
vii. 364.
3 D. L. vii. § 51 (Uera et£ews /cat (riry/carafl&rews.
4 Cic. Acad. Pr. § 38.
6 S.E. adv. M. vii. 154.
6 Ibid. 248 ; D. L. vii. §§ 46, 50 ; Cic. Acad. Pr. §§ 18, 77,
112.
24
LOGIC
virtue of that object itself was put into the
definition to provide against such a case as that
of the mad Orestes, who takes his sister to be a
Fury.1 There the impression was derived from
an existing object, but not from that object as
such, but as coloured by the imagination of the
percipient.
The criterion of truth then was no other than
the gripping phantasy. Such at least was the
doctrine of the earlier Stoics;2 but the later
added a saving clause ' when there is no impedi
ment.' 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 Mene-
laus 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
1 Eur. Orest. 264.
2 S.E. adv. M. vii. 253 ; D. L. vii. § 54.
25
STOICISM
the hair of the head and dragged them to
assent.1
So far we have used ' phantasy ' only of real or
imaginary impressions of sense. But the term
was not thus restricted by the Stoics, who divided
phantasies into sensible and not sensible. The
latter came through the understanding and were
of bodiless things, which could only be grasped
by reason.2 The ' ideas ' of Plato, they declared,
existed only in our minds. ' Horse,' ' man/ and
'animal' had no substantial existence, but were
phantasms of the soul. The Stoics were thus
what we should call Conceptualists.3
Comprehension too was used in a wider sense
than that in which we have so far employed it.
There was comprehension by the senses, as of
white and black, of rough and smooth, but there
was also comprehension by the reason of demon
strative conclusions, such as that the gods exist,
and that they exercise providence.4 Here we
are reminded of Locke's declaration.5 ''Tis as
certain there is a God, as that the opposite
angles, made by the intersection of two straight
lines, are equal.' The Stoics indeed had great
1 S.E. adv. M. vii. 257. 2 D. L- vii. § 51.
3 Stob. Eel. i. 332 ; Plut. 882 E, Plac. 10.
4 D. L. vii. § 52. 5 Essay i. 4, § 16.
26
LOGIC
affinities with that thinker, or rather he with
them. The Stoic account of the manner in
which the mind arrives at its ideas might almost
be taken from the first book of Locke's Essay.
As many as nine ways are enumerated, of which
the first corresponds to simple ideas —
(1) by presentation, as objects of sense ; l
(2) by likeness, as the idea of Socrates from his
picture ;
(3) by analogy, that is, by increase or decrease,
as ideas of giants and pigmies from men,
or as the notion of the centre of the earth,
which is reached by the consideration of
smaller spheres ;
(4) by transposition, as the idea of men with
eyes in their breasts ;
(5) by composition, as the idea of a Centaur :
(6) by opposition, as the idea of death from
that of life ;
(7) by a kind of transition, as the meaning of
words and the idea of place ; 2
(8) by nature, as the notion of the just and the
good;
(9) by privation, as ' handless.' 3
1 D. L. vii. § 53 ; S. E. xi. 250.
2 D. L. vii. § 53 ; Cic. N. D. i. § 105.
3 See further Cic. Fin. iii. § 33 ; S. E. xi. 250, 251 ; D. L. x.
§32.
27
STOICISM
The Stoics resembled Locke again in endeavour
ing to give such a definition of knowledge as
should cover at once the reports of the senses
and the relation between ideas. Knowledge was
defined by them as ' a sure comprehension ' or ' a
habit in the acceptance of phantasies which was
not liable to be changed by reason.' 1 On a first
hearing these definitions might seem limited to
sense-knowledge ; but, if we bethink ourselves of
the wider meanings of ' comprehension ' and of
'phantasy,' we see that the definitions apply, as
they were meant to apply, to the mind's grasp
upon the force of a demonstration no less than
upon the existence of a physical object.2
Zeno, with that touch of oriental symbolism
which characterised him, used to illustrate to his
disciples the steps to knowledge by means of
gestures. Displaying his right hand with the
fingers outstretched he would say, 'That is a
phantasy ' ; then, contracting the fingers a little,
'That is assent'; then, having closed the fist,
' That is comprehension ' ; then, clasping the fist
closely with the left hand, he would add, ' That is
knowledge.'
A ' notion,' which corresponds to our word
1 D. L. vii. § 47 ; Stob, Eel. ii. 128, 130 ; S. E. vii. § 151 ;
Cic. Acad. Post. § 41. 2 S. E. viii. 397.
28
LOGIC
' concept/ was defined as ' a phantasm of the
understanding of a rational animal.' For a notion
was but a phantasm as it presented itself to a
rational mind. In the same way so many
shillings and sovereigns are in themselves but
shillings and sovereigns, but, when used as pas
sage-money, they become ' fare.' Notions were
arrived at partly by nature, partly by teaching
and study. The former kind of notions were
called ' preconceptions/ the latter went merely by
the generic name.1
Out of the general ideas which nature imparts
to us reason was perfected about the age of four
teen, 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.2 Thus reason,
which united us to the gods, was not, according to
the Stoics, a pre-existent principle, but a gradual
development out of sense. It might truly be said
that with them the senses were the intellect.3
Being was confined by the Stoics to body, a
bold assertion of which we shall meet the conse
quences later. At present it is sufficient to
1 Plut. 900 B, C, D, Plac. iv. 11 ; Cic. Acad. Pr. §§ 21, 22;
Fin. v. § 59, iii. § 33.
2 Plut. 900 C, Plac. iv. 11, 909 C, Plac. v. 23 ; Stob. Eel. i.
792. 3 cic. Acad> Pr § 30
29
STOICISM
notice what havoc it makes among the categories.
Of Aristotle's ten categories it leaves only the
first, Substance, and that only in its narrowest
sense of Primary Substance. But a substance, or
body, might be regarded in four ways—
(1) simply as a body;
(2) as a body of a particular kind ;
(3) as a body in a particular state ;
(4) as a body in a particular relation.
Hence result the four Stoic categories of —
substrates,
suchlike,
so disposed,
so related.1
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 recognised
and spoken of. The difficulty was got over by
the invention of the higher category of ' some
what,' which should include both body and the
bodiless. Time Avas a ' somewhat,' and so was
space, though neither of them possessed being.2
, iroid, Trcbs HXOVTO., irpbs ri, 7ru>y
2 S. E. x. 218, 237 ; D. L. vii. 140, 141 ; Stob. Eel. i. 392;
Sen. Ep. 58, §§ 13, 15.
30
LOGIC
In the Stoic treatment of the proposition gram
mar was very much mixed up with logic. They
had a wide name which applied to any part of
diction, whether a word or words, a sentence, or
even a syllogism.1 This we shall render by ' diet.'
A diet then was defined as ' that which subsists in
correspondence with a rational phantasy.'2 A
diet was one of the things which the Stoics
admitted to be devoid of body. There were three
things involved when anything was said — the
sound, the sense, and the external object. Of
these the first and the last were bodies, but the
intermediate one was not a body.3 This we may
illustrate, after Seneca, as follows. You see Cato
walking. What your eyes see and your mind
attends to is a body in motion. Then you say,
' Cato is walking.' The mere sound indeed of
these words is air in motion, and therefore a body,
but the meaning of them is not a body, but an
enouncement about a body, which is quite a
different thing.4
On examining such details as are left us of the
Stoic logic, the first thing which strikes one is
its extreme complexity as compared with the
Aristotelian. It was a scholastic age, and the
1 D. L. vii. § 63. 2 Ibid. § 6.3 ; S. E. viii. 70.
8 S. E. viii. 11, 12. 4 Sen. Ep. 117, § 13.
31
STOICISM
Stoics refined and distinguished to their hearts'
content. As regards immediate inference, a
subject which has been run into subtleties among
ourselves, Chrysippus estimated that the changes
which could be rung on ten propositions exceeded
a million, but for this assertion he was taken to
task by Hipparchus, the mathematician, who
proved that the affirmative proposition yielded
exactly 103,049 forms and the negative 310,952.1
With us the affirmative proposition is more
prolific in consequences than the negative. But
then the Stoics were not content with so simple a
thing as mere negation, but had negative, arnetic,
and privative, to say nothing of supernegative
propositions. Another noticeable feature is the
total absence of the three figures of Aristotle;
and the only moods spoken of are the moods of
the complex syllogism, such as the modus ponens
in a conjunctive. Their type of reasoning was—
If A, then B.
But A.
/. B.
The important part played by conjunctive
propositions in their logic led the Stoics to
formulate the following rule with regard to the
material quality of such propositions : Truth can
1 Pint. 1047 C, Sto. Repug. 29.
32
LOGIC
only be followed by truth; but falsehood may
be followed by falsehood or truth.
Thus, if it be truly stated that it is day, any
consequence of that statement, e.g. that it is light,
must be true also. But a false statement may
lead either way. For instance, if it be falsely
stated that it is night, then the consequence that
it is dark is false also. But if we say : ' The earth
flies/ which was regarded as not only false, but
impossible,1 this involves the true consequence
that the earth is. Though the simple syllogism
is not alluded to in the sketch which Diogenes
Laertius gives of the Stoic logic, it is of frequent
occurrence in the accounts left us of their argu
ments. Take for instance the syllogism where
with Zeno advocated the cause of temperance
One does not commit a secret to a man who
is drunk.
One does commit a secret to a good man.
/. A good man will not get drunk.
The chain-argument, which we wrongly call
the Sorites, was also a favourite 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 demon-
1 Here \ve may recall the warning of Arago to call nothing
impossible outside the range of pure mathematics.
c 33
STOICISM
strated 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 Avise man is happy.1
The above will serve as a specimen of the
purely verbal arguments which the Stoics were
pleased to put forward. Cicero is fond of com
paring their method to thorns and pin-pricks,
which irritate the exterior without having any
vital effect.2 If logic was their strength, it was
also their weakness; for, notwithstanding their
conviction that logic was concerned with the
actual truth of things, we find them so revelling
in the pure forms of reasoning as to be content
to play the game even with counters instead of
coin.
The delight which the early Stoics took m
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
1 Sen. Ep. 85, § 2 ; Cic. T.D. iii. § 18.
2 Fin> iv. § 7 ; T.D. ii. § 42 ; Parad. Intr. § 2.
34
LOGIC
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. Chry-
sippus himself was not above propounding such
sophisms as the following
Whoever divulges the mysteries to the un
initiated commits impiety.
The hierophant divulges the mysteries to the
uninitiated.
/. The hierophant commits impiety.
Anything you say passes through your mouth.
You say ' a wagon.'
.'. A wagon passes through your mouth.
He is said to have written eleven books on
the No-one fallacy. But what seems to have
exercised most of his ingenuity was the famous
Liar, the invention of which is ascribed to
Eubulides.1 This fallacy, in its simplest form, is
as follows : If you say truly that you are telling
a lie, are you lying or telling the truth ? Chry-
sippus set this down as inexplicable. Neverthe
less he was far from declining to discuss it. For
i Cic. Div. ii. § 11 ; Plut. 1070 D ; Com. Not. 24; D.L. ii
§ 108.
35
STOICISM
we find in the list of his works a treatise in
live books on the Inexplicables ; an Introduction
to the Liar and Liars for Introduction ; six books
on the Liar itself; a work directed against those
who thought that such propositions were both
false and true; another against those who pro
fessed to solve the Liar by a process of division ;
three books on the solution of the Liar; and
finally a polemic against those who asserted that
the Liar had its premisses false.1 It was well
for poor Philetas of Cos that he ended his days
before Chrysippus was born, though, as it was,
he grew thin and died of the Liar, and his
epitaph served as a solemn reminder to poets
not to meddle with logi<
4 Philetas of Cos am I,
'Twas the Liar who made me die,
And the bad nights caused thereby.'
Perhaps we owe him an apology for the trans
lation.2
1 D.L. vii. §§96-98.
2 Athen. ix. 401 C :—
/cat VVKTUV 0/wrtSes i
CHAPTER IV
ETHIC
have already had to touch upon the psy
chology of the Stoics in connection with the first
principles of logic. It is no less necessary to do
so now in dealing with the foundation of 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.1 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, con
ceiving that, if once it were let into the citadel
of the soul, it would supplant the rightful ruler.
1 D.L. vii. §§ 110, 157; Philo, ii. 506; De Incor. Mund
§ 19.
37
STOICISM
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.1
The unperturbed intellect was the legitimate
monarch in the kingdom of man. Hence the
Stoics commonly spoke of it as 'the leading
principle.' 2 This was the part of the soul which
received phantasies,3 and it was also that in which
impulses were generated,4 with which we have
now more particularly to do.
Impulse, or appetition, was the principle in the
soul which impelled to action.6 In an unper-
verted state it was directed only to things in
accordance with nature.6 The negative form of
this principle, or the avoidance of things as being
contrary to nature, we shall call ' repulsion.' 7
Notwithstanding the sublime heights to which
Stoic morality rose, it was professedly based on
1 Sen. de Ira. i. 8, §§ 2, 3 ; Pint. 446 F, 447 A, de Virt. Mor. 7.
2 Cic. N.D. ii. § 29 ; D.L. vii. §§ 133, 139, 159 ; Philo, i. 625,
ii. 438 ; Sen. Ep. 121, § 13.
3 S.E. vii. 236. 4 D.L. vii. § 159.
5 Cic. Off. i. §§ 101, 132.
e Cic. Fin. iv. § 39, v. § 17; Acad. Pr. § 24; Off. ii. § 18,
i. § 105 ; Sen. Ep. 124, § 3 ; 113, §§ 2, 18 ; 121, § 13.
7 D.L. vii. § 104 ; Plut. 1037 F, Sto. llepug. 11 ; Stob. Eel. ii.
142, 144, 148, 162; Cic. Fin. v. § 18; N.D. ii. §34.
38
ETHIC
solf-love, wherein the Stoics were at one with
the other schools of thought in the ancient
world.
The earliest impulse that .appeared in a newly-
born animal was to protect itself and its own
constitution, which were ' conciliated ' to it by
nature.1 What tended to its survival it sought,
what tended to its destruction it shunned. Thus
self-preservation was the first law of life.
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 con
tributed to the vital harmony. These were called
' the first things in accordance with nature.' 2
Their opposites were all contrary to nature, such
as sickness, weakness, mutilation.3 Under the
first things in accordance with nature came also
congenital advantages of soul, such as quickness
of intelligence, natural ability, industry, applica-
1 D.L. vii. § 85; Plut. 1038 B, Sto. Repug. 12; Cic. Fin. iii.
§ 16, iv. § 26, v. § 24 ; Sen. Ep. 82, § 15 ; 121, § 14.
2 Aul. Cell. xii. 5, § 7 ; Luc. Vit. Auct. 23 ; Stob. Eel. ii. 60,
136, 148 ; Cic. Fin. iii. §§ 17, 21, 22, v. § 18.
3 Stob. Eel. ii. 144 ; Cic. Fin. v. § 18.
39
STOICISM
tion, memory, and the like.1 It was a question
whether pleasure was to be included among the
number. Some members of the school evidently
thought that it might be,2 but the orthodox
opinion was that pleasure was a sort of after
growth,3 and that the direct pursuit of it was
deleterious to the organism. The after-growths
of virtue were joy, cheerfulness, and the like.4
These were the gambollings 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.5 Virtue was therefore pre-eminently
1 Stob. ii. 60 ; Cic. Fin. v. § 18
2 Cic. Fin. iii. § 17 ; S.E. xi. 73.
:< D.L. vii. §§ 86, 94. Cp. Cic. Fin. iii. § 32; Stob. Eel. ii.
78, 110.
4 D.L. ii. § 94 ; Epict. Frag. 52.
6 D.L. vii. §86.
40
ETHIC
in accordance with nature.1 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 identi
fied 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.2 But the question is begged by the use
of the word ' passion,' which was denned 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 Chry-
sippus in his work on Law that impulse is 'the
reason of man commanding him to act,' and
similarly that repulsion is 'prohibitive reason.'3
This renders the Stoic position unmistakable,
and we must accommodate 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
1 Plut. 1062 C, Com. Not. 9.
- De Ira. i. 10, § 2. 3 Plut. 1037 F, Sto. Repug. 11.
41
STOICISM
the perfected form of impulse. Whenever im
pulse is not identical with reason — at least in a
rational being — it is not truly impulse, but passion.
The Stoics, it will be observed, were Evolu
tionists in their psychology. But, like many
Evolutionists at the present day, they did not
believe in the origin of mind out of matter. In
all living things there existed already what they
called ' seminal reasons,' which accounted for the
intelligence displayed by plants as well as by
animals.1 As there were four cardinal virtues, so
there were four primary passions. These were
delight, grief, desire, and fear.2 All of them were
excited by the presence or the prospect of fancied
good or ill. What prompted desire by its pro
spect caused delight by its presence, and what
prompted fear by its prospect caused grief by its
presence.3 Thus two of the primary passions had
to do with good and two with evil. All were
furies which infested the life of fools, rendering
it bitter and grievous to them ; and it was the
business of philosophy to fight against them.
1 D.L. vii. §§ 110, 136, 148, 157, 159, viii. §29 ; Pint. 1077 B,
Com. Not. 35, 881 E, Plac. i. 6 ; Stob. Eel. i. 322, 372, 414,
ii. 60, 148, 150 ; Philo, ii. 504, de Incor. Mund. §§ 17, 18.
2 D.L. vii. § 110; Stob. Eel. ii. 166; Cic. Fin. iii. § 35;
T.D. iii. § 24 ; iv. §§ 8, 11, 13, 43.
3 Epict. Diss. iv. 1, § 84.
42
ETHIC
Nor was this strife a hopeless one, since the
passions were not grounded in nature, but were
due to false opinion.1 They originated in volun
tary judgments, and owed their birth to a lack of
mental sobriety. If men wished to live the span
of life that was allotted to them in quietness and
peace, they must by all means keep clear of the
passions.
The four primary passions having been formu
lated, it became necessary to justify the division
by arranging the specific forms of feeling under
these four heads.2 In this task the Stoics dis
played a subtlety which is of more interest to the
lexicographer than to the student of philosophy.
They laid great stress on the derivation of words
as affording a clue to their meaning ; and, as their
etymology was bound by no principles, their in
genuity was free to indulge in the wildest freaks
of fancy.
Though all passion stood self-condemned, there
were nevertheless certain ' eupathies,' or happy
affections, which would be experienced by the
ideally good and wise man.3 These were not
perturbations of the soul, but rather ' con-
1 Cic. Acad. Post. § 39 ; Fin. Hi. § 35 ; T.D. iii. § 24 ; iv. § 14 ;
D.L. vii. § 111 ; Stob. Eel. ii. 168.
2 Cic. Fin. iii. § 35 ; T.D. iii. § 24.
3 D.L. vii. §116.
43
STOICISM
stancies';1 they were not opposed to reason, but
were rather part of reason. Though the sage
would never be transported with delight, he
would still feel an abiding 'joy ' 2 in the presence
of the true and only good ; he would never indeed
be agitated by desire, but still he would be ani
mated by 'wish,'3 for that was directed only to
the good ; and, though he would never feel ' fear,'
still he would be actuated in danger by a proper
' caution.' 4
There was therefore something rational corre
sponding to three out of the four primary passions
— against delight was to be set joy ; against desire,
wish; against fear, caution; but against grief
there was nothing to be set, for that arose from
the presence of ill, which would never attach to
the sage. Grief was the irrational conviction that
one ought to afflict oneself, where there was no
occasion for it. The ideal of the Stoics was the
unclouded serenity of Socrates, of whom Xan
thippe declared that he had always the same face,
whether on leaving the house in the morning or
on returning to it at night.
1 Cic. T.D. iv. §§ 14, 80.
2 xapa as opposed to TjSovrj, Cic. T.D. iv. § 13; Plut. 1046 B,
Sto. Repug. 25.
3 povX-rjcris as opposed to e-jridv/jiia..
4 ei)\ct/3eta as opposed to 06/3os.
44
ETHIC
As the motley crowd of passions followed the
banners of their four leaders, so specific forms of
feeling sanctioned by reason were severally as
signed to the three eupathies.
Things were divided by Zeno into good, bad arid
indifferent.1 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.2
Good was defined as that which benefits.3 To
confer benefit was no less essential to good than
to impart warmth was to heat.4 If one asked in
what ' to benefit ' lay, one received the reply that
it lay in producing an act or state in accordance
with virtue ; and similarly it was laid down that
' to hurt ' lay in producing an act or state in
accordance with vice.5 The indifference of things
other than virtue and vice was apparent from the
definition of good, which made it essentially bene-
1 Stob. ii. 90 ; D.L. vii. § 101 ; Plut. 1064 C, Com. Not. 12 ;
Sen. Ep. 82, § 10.
2 D.L. vii. § 102; Stob. Eel. ii. 92: Ceb. Tab. 36; Epict.
Diss. ii. 9, § 13. 3 D.L. vii. § 94; Stob. ii. 96.
4 D.L. vii. § 103. 6 Ibid., 104.
45
STOICISM
ficial. Such things as health and wealth might
be beneficial or not, according to circumstances ; 1
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.
Good having been identified with virtue, there
could be no question of any conflict between the
right and the expedient. This was a point on
which the Stoic doctrine was very explicit. The
good was expedient and fitting and profitable and
useful and serviceable and beautiful and beneficial
and choiceworthy and just.2 These various pre
dicates were defined, generally in accordance with
their etymology, in such a way as to avoid the
charge of one being a mere synonym of the other.
Their contraries were all applicable to the bad.3
The true and only good then was identical with
what the Greeks called ' the beautifu] ' 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 right, and,
on the other hand, between the bad and wrong,
was the head and front of the Stoic ethics. The
1 Ceb. Tab. 38 ; D.L. vii. § 100.
2 D.L. vii. § 98 ; Stob. ii. 94, 96. 3 Stob. ii. 96, 202.
46
ETHIC
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.1
As virtue was itself the end, it was of course
choiceworthy in and for itself, apart from hope
or fear with regard to its consequences.2 More
over, as being the highest good, it could admit of
no increase from the addition of things indifferent.
It did not even admit of increase from the pro
longation of its own existence; for the question
was not one of quantity, but of quality. Virtue
for an eternity was no more virtue, and therefore
no more good, than virtue for a moment. Even
so one circle was no more round than another,
whatever you might choose to make its diameter,
nor would it detract from the perfection of a
circle, if it were to be obliterated immediately in
the same dust in which it had been drawn.3
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.4
1 D.L. vii. § 101 ; Stob. ii. 202; Cic. Acad. Post. §§ 7, 35;
T.D. iii. § 34 ; Off. iii. §§ 11, 35 ; Sen. Ep. 71, § 4.
- D.L. vii. §89.
* Sen. Ep. 74, § 27 ; Plut. 1062 A, Com. Not. 8, 1046 D, Sto.
Repug. 26.
4 Cic. Fin. iv. § 35, T.D. ii. § 47, iv. § 34, v. § 39 ; Sen. Ep.
76, § 10.
47
STOICISM
As reason was the only thing whereby Nature
had distinguished man from other creatures, to
live the rational life was to follow Nature.1
Nature was at once the law of God and the law
for man.2 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 3 in
which Zeno declared happiness to consist. This
was attained when one's own genius was in
harmony with the will that disposed all things.4
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
1 Sen. Ep. 66, § 39. 2 Cic. Off. iii. § 23.
3 efyoia /3iou, Stob. ii. 138 ; S.E. xi. 30.
4 D.L. vii. §88.
48
ETHIC
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 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.1 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 deter
mine 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 > deposit through avarice, which is a form
of injustice, or yet to one who misconducted
1 Plut. 1046 F, Sto. Repug. 27 ; D.L. vii. § 125; Stob. Eel. ii.
112 ; Cic. Acad. Post. § 38 ; T.D. iii. § 17.
D 49
STOICISM
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 as 'virtue fighting on behalf of
justice.'1 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 one's conviction.2 One virtue never
acted by itself, but always on the advice of a com
mittee.3 The obverse to this paradox — ' He who
has one vice has all vices ' — was a conclusion which
the Stoics did not shrink from drawing.4 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.5
We have now encountered the first paradox of
Stoicism, and can discern its origin in the identi
fication of virtue with pure reason. In setting
forth the novelties in Zeno's teaching, Cicero
1 Cic. Off. i. 62. 2 D.L. vii. § 126.
a Sen. Ep. 67.§ 10. 4 Stob. Eel. ii. 216.
* Cic. T.U. ii. §32.
50
ETHIC
mentions that, while his predecessors had recog
nised virtues due to nature and habit, he made
all dependent upon reason.1 A natural conse
quence of this was the reassertion of the position
which Plato held, or wished to hold, namely, that
virtue can be taught.2 But the part played by
nature in virtue cannot be ignored. It was not
in the power of Zeno to alter facts ; all he could
do was to legislate as to names. And this he did
vigorously. Nothing was to be called virtue
which was not of the nature of reason and know
ledge, but still it had to be admitted that nature
supplied the starting-points for the four cardinal
virtues — for the discovery of one's duty and the
steadying of one's impulses, for right endurances
and harmonious distributions.3 To nature were
due the seeds, though the harvest was reaped by
the sage; hers were the sparks, though the fire
was to be fanned into flame by teaching.4
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.
1 Acad. Post. § 38.
2 D.L. vii. § 91 ; Sen. Ep. 90 § 44, 123 § 16.
3 Stob. ii. 108; D.L. vii. § 89.
4 Cic. T.D.-iii. §2; Fin. v. § 18.
51
STOICISM
By things indifferent were meant such as did
not necessarily contribute to virtue, for instance,
health, wealth, strength, and honour. 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 under
stood then that there are two senses of the word
' indifferent ' —
(1) neither good nor bad,
(2) neither awaking impulse nor repulsion.1
Among things indifferent in the former sense
some were in accordance with nature, some
were contrary to nature, and some were neither
one nor the other. Health, strength, and sound
ness of the senses'were in accordance with nature ;
1 D.L. vii. § 104 ; Stob. ii. 142; S.E. xi. 59-61.
52
ETHIC
sickness, weakness, and mutilation were contrary
to nature; but such things as the fallibility of
the soul and the vulnerability of the body were
neither in accordance with nature nor yet contrary
to nature, but just nature.
All things that were in accordance with nature
had ' value/ and all things that were contrary to
nature had what we must call ' disvalue.' l 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.2 But still there
might be assigned to them what Antipater ex
pressed by the term ' a selective value ' or what
he expressed by its barbarous privative ' a disselec-
tive 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
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 152; D.L. vii. § 105; Cic. Fin. iii. §§ 20, 50,
51.
2 Stob. Eel. ii. 154, 156.
53
STOICISM
were neither preferred nor rejected.1 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.2
Things preferred and rejected might belong to
mind, body, or estate. Among things preferred
in the case of the mind were natural ability, art,
moral progress, and the like, while their contraries
were rejected. In the case of the body, life,
health, strength, good condition, completeness,
and beauty were preferred, while death, sickness,
weakness, ill-condition, mutilation, and ugliness
were rejected. Among things external to soul
and body, wealth, reputation, and nobility were
preferred, while poverty, ill-repute, and baseness
of birth were rejected.3
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.
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 144, 156 ; D.L. vii. § 105; S.E. xi. 62 ; Cic.
Acad. Post. § 36 ; Fin. iii §§ 15, 52, 53, iv. § 72, v. §§ 78, 90.
2 Stob. ii. 156 ; Cic. Fin. iii. § 52.
B D.L. vii. § 106; Stob. Eel. ii. 146.
54
ETHIC
The sago alone could act rightly, but other
people might perform ' the proprieties.' 1 Any
one might honour 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.2 All the acts of
the sage were 'perfect proprieties,' v^hich were
called ' Tightnesses.' 3 All acts of all other men
were sins or ' wrongnesses.' At their best they
could only be ' intermediate proprieties.' 4 The
term ' propriety,' then, is a generic one. But,
as often happens, the generic term got deter
mined in use to a specific meaning, so that
intermediate acts arc commonly spoken of as
' proprieties ' in opposition to ' lightnesses.' In
stances of Tightnesses are displaying wisdom and
dealing justly; instances of proprieties or inter
mediate acts are marrying, going on an embassy,
and dialectic.5
The word ' duty ' is often employed to trans-
1 TO.
2 S.E. xi. 201, 202.
3 Stob. ii. 158, 160, 184; Cic. Fin. iii. §§ 24, 59, iv. S 15;
Acad. Post. § 37; Off. i. § 8, iii. § 14, pro Mur. §s 3, 11,
GO.
4 Stob. ii. 158, 100; Pint. 1037 F., Sto. Repug. 11 ; Cic.
Acad. Post. § 37 ; OiT. i. § 8 ; T. D. iii. § 11.
" Stob. ii. 158, 192.
55
STOICISM
late 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 actions of^the
lower animals, and even to the growth of plants.1
Now, apart from a craze for generalisation, we
should hardly think of the 'stern daughter of
the voice of God ' in connection with an amceba
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,2 so that, as far as this goes,
' becomingness ' would be the most appropriate
translation.
The sphere of propriety was confined to things
indifferent,3 so that there were proprieties which
were common to the sage and the fool. It had
to do with taking the things which were in
accordance with nature and rejecting those that
were not. Even the propriety of living or dying
was determined, not by reference to virtue or
vice, but to the preponderance or deficiency of
1 D.L. vii. § 107; Stob. ii. 158.
2 D.L. vii. § 108. 3 Cic. Fin. iii. § 59 ; Stob. ii. 226.
56
ETHIC
things in accordance with nature. It might thus
he a propriety for the sage in spite of his happi
ness, to depart from life of his own accord, and
for the fool notwithstanding his misery, to remain
in it. Life, being in itself indifferent, the whole
question was one of opportunism. Wisdom
might prompt the leaving herself should occasion
seem to call for it.1
Since men in general were very far from being
sages,2 it is evident that, if the Stoic morality was
to affect the world at large, it had to be accom
modated in some way to existing circumstances.
No moral treatise perhaps has exercised so wide
spread an influence as that which was known to
our forefathers under the title of Tully's Offices.
Now that work is founded on Pansetius, a rather
unorthodox Stoic, and it does not profess to treat
of the ideal morality at all, but only of the inter
mediate proprieties (iii. § 14). We may notice
also that in that work the attempt to regard
virtue as one and indivisible, is frankly aban
doned as being unsuitable to the popular in
telligence (ii. § 35).
We pass on now to another instance of accom-
1 Cic. Fin. iii. § 61 ; Stob. ii. 22G ; Plut. 1063 D., Com.
Not. 11, 1042 D., Sto. Repug. 18; 1039 E., Sto. Repug. 14.
2 Cic. Off. i. § 46.
57
STOICISM
modation. According to the high Stoic doctrine
there was no mean between virtue and vice.1 All
men indeed received from nature the starting-
points for virtue, but until perfection had been
attained they rested under the condemnation oi:'
vice. It was, to employ an illustration of the
poet-philosopher Cleanthes, as though Nature
had begun an iambic line and left men to finish
it.2 Until that was done they were to wear the
fool's cap. The Peripatetics, on the other hand,
recognised an intermediate state between virtue
and vice, to which they gave the name of progress
or proficience.3 Yefc so entirely had the Stoics,
for practical purposes, to accept this lower level,
that the word ' proficience ' has come to be spoken
of as though it were of Stoic origin.
Seneca is fond of contrasting the sage with
the proficient.4 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 equi
valent 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.
1 D. L. vii. § 127. 2 Stob. Eel. ii. 110.
3 D. L. vii. § 127 ; Acad. Post. § 20 ; Fin. iv. § G6 ; Off.
iii. § 17; Sen. Ep. 71, §36.
* Ep. 71, § 30 ; 72, § 6 ; 75, § 8 ; 94, § 50.
58
ETHIC
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 re
minds 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 realised 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.1
1 Sen. Ep. 75, § 8.
59
STOICISM
Epictetus devotes a dissertation (i. 4) to the
same subject of progress or proficience. The
only true sphere for progress, he declares, is that
in which one's work lies. If you are interested
in the progress of an athlete, you expect to see
his biceps, not his dumb-bells ; and so in morality
it is not the books a man has read, but how he
has profited by them that counts. For the work
of man is not to master Chrysippus on impulse,
but to control impulse itself.
From these concessions to the weakness of
humanity we now pass to the Stoic paradoxes,
where we shall see their doctrine in its full
rigour. It is perhaps these very paradoxes
which account for the puzzled fascination with
which Stoicism affected the mind of antiquity,
just as obscurity in a poet may prove a surer
passport to fame than more strictly poetical
merits.
The root of Stoicism being a paradox, it is not
surprising that the offshoots should be so too.
To say that ' Virtue is the highest good,' is a
proposition to which every one who aspires to the
spiritual life must yield assent with his lips, even
if he has not yet learnt to believe it in his heart.
But alter it into ' Virtue is the only good,' and by
that slight change it becomes cit once the teeming
60
ETHIC
mother of paradoxes. By a paradox is meant
that which runs counter to general opinion. Now
it is quite certain that men have regarded, do
regard, and, we may safely add, will regard things
as good which are not virtue. But, if we grant
this initial paradox, a great many others will
follow along with it — as, for instance, that ' Virtue
is sufficient of itself for happiness.' The fifth
book of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations is an
eloquent defence of this thesis, in which the
orator combats the suggestion that a good man
is not happy when he is being broken on the
wheel !
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
offence 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 com-
61
STOICISM
mon-sense and morality, to say nothing of utility,
revolt against it.1
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.' 2
In so far as the above paradoxes do not depend
upon a metaphorical use of language, they all
seem traceable to three initial assumptions — the
identification of happiness with virtue, of virtue
with reason, and the view taken of reason as
something absolute, not admitting of degrees,
1 Sat. i. iii. 96-98.
2 D. L. vii. § 120 ; Cic. Fin. iii. § 48 ; Plut. 1063 A, Com.
Not. 10.
62
ETHIC
something which is either present in its entirety
or not at all. There was no play of light and
shadow in the Stoic landscape, for they had done
away with the clouds of passion. They could not
allow that these more or less obscured the rays of
reason, having refused to admit that there was a
difference of nature between the clouds and the
sunlight, passion, according to them, being only
reason gone wrong.
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 ! ' 1
It is out of keeping with common-sense to draw
a hard and fast distinction between good and bad.
Yet this was what the Stoics did.2 They insisted
on effecting here and now that separation between
the sheep and the goats, which Christ postponed
to the Day of Judgment. Unfortunately, when it
1 Cic. Fin. i. § 61 ; T. D. ii. § 18, v. § 73.
2 D. L. vii. § 127; Stob. Eel. ii. 116.
63
STOICISM
came to practice, all were found to be goats, so
that the division was a merely formal one. ' It
approves itself,' says Stobseus,1 ' to Zeno and the
Stoic philosophers who came after him that there
are two kinds of men, one good, the other bad.
The good all their life display the virtues, and the
bad the vices. Whence one kind are always
right in all that they purpose, the other always
wrong. And inasmuch as the good avail them
selves of the arts of life in their conduct, they
do all things well,2 as doing them wisely and
temperately and in accordance with the other
virtues ; whereas the bad, on the contrary, do all
things ill. The good are great and well-grown
and tall and strong. Great, because they are able
to attain thef objects which they set before them
selves and which are dependent on their own
will : well-grown, because they find increase from
every quarter; tall, because they have reached
the^height which befits a noble and good man ;
and {strong, because they are endowed with the
strength; that befits them. The good man is not
to be vanquished or cast in a combat, seeing that
he is "neither compelled by any one nor does he
compel another ; he is neither hindered nor does
he hinder; he is neither forced by any one nor
1 Eel. ii. 198, 200. 2 Athen. 158a.
64
ETHIC
does he himself force any man ; he neither does
ill nor is himself done ill to, nor falls into ill, nor
is deceived nor deceives another, nor is he mis
taken or ignorant, nor does he forget, nor enter
tain any false supposition, but is happy in the
highest degree and fortunate and blessed and
wealthy and pious and beloved of God and worthy
of everything, fit to be a king or general or states
man, and versed in the arts of managing a house
hold and making money: whereas the bad have
all the attributes that are opposite to these. And
generally to the virtuous belong all good things,
and to the bad all evils.'
The good man of the Stoics was variously
known as ' the sage/ or ' the serious man '
(o o-jrovSacos), 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 ' (o ao-Telo<>), while the
fool in contradistinction was called a < boor.'
' Boorishness ' was defined as ' an inexperience of
the customs and laws of the state.'1 By 'the
state ' was meant, not Athens or Sparta, as would
have been the case in a former age, but the
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 210.
E 65
STOICISM
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.1 In this
city justice was natural and not conventional, for
the law by which it was governed was the law of
right reason.2 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 denned 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.3
As a member of a state and by nature subject
to law, man was essentially a social being. Be
tween all the wise there existed 'unanimity,'
which was < a knowledge of the common good/ 4
because their views of life were harmonious.
Fools, on the other hand, whose views of life
were discordant, were enemies to one another and
bent on mutual injury.
As a member of society the sage would play
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 208. 2 Ibid.
* Ibid. 190, 192.
4 Ibid. 184, 222. Cp. Arist. E.N. ix. 6.
66
ETHIC
his part in public life.1 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 cer
tain 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 a member of existing society the sage would
marry and beget children, both for his own sake
and for that of his country, on behalf of which,
if it were good, he would be ready to suffer and
die. Still he would look forward to a better
time when, in Zeno's as in Plato's republic, the
wise would have women and children in common,
when the elders would love all the rising genera
tion equally with parental fondness, and when
marital jealousy would be no more.2
1 D.L. vii. § 121 ; Stob. Eel. ii. 186, 224, 228; Cic. Fin. iii.
§68. 2 D.L. vii. §§33, 131.
STOICISM
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 conversa
tion as a means for promoting goodwill and
friendship ; so far as might be, he was all things
to all men,1 which made him fascinating and
charming, insinuating and even wily; he knew
how to hit the point and to choose the right
moment; yet with it all he was plain and un
ostentatious and simple and unaffected; in par
ticular he never delighted in irony, much less
in sarcasm.2
From the social characteristics of the sage we
turn now to a side of his character which appears
eminently anti-social. One of his most highly-
vaunted characteristics was his self-sufficingness.
He was to be able to step out of a burning city,
coming from the wreck, riot only of his fortunes,
but of his friends and family, and to declare
with a smile that he had lost nothing.3 All that
he truly cared for was to be centred in himself.4
Only thus could ho be sure that Fortune would
not wrest it from him.
The apathy or passionlessness of the sage is
i Stob. Eel. ii. 220. a Ibid. 222.
3 Cic. Lael. § 7 ; Sen. de Const. Sap. 5. 4 Cic. T.D. v. § 30.
68
ETHIC
another of his most salient features. The passions
being, on Zeno's showing, not natural, but forms
of disease, the sage, as being the perfect man,
would of course be wholly free from them. They
were so many disturbances of the even flow
in which his bliss lay. The sage therefore would
never be moved by a feeling of favour towards
any one ; he would never pardon a fault ; he
would never feel pity ; he would never be prevailed
upon by entreaty ; he would never be stirred to
anger.1
To say that the sage is not moved by partiality
may be let pass as representing an unattainable,
but still highly proper frame of mind. But to
say that he is unforgiving 2 is apt to raise a pre
judice against him on the part of the natural
man. There were two reasons, however, for this
statement, which tend to alter the light in which
it first presents itself. One was the ideal con
ception which the Stoics entertained of law.
The law was holy and just and good. To remit
its penalties therefore, or to deem them too
severe, was not the part of a wise man. Hence
they discarded Aristotle's conception of 'equity'
as correcting the inequalities of law.3 It was
1 Cic. pro Mur. §§61, 62.
2 D.L. vii. § 123 ; Stob. Eel. ii. 190. 3 Ibid.
69
STOICISM
a thing too vacillating for the absolute temper
of their ethics. But a second reason for the sage
never forgiving was that he never had anything
to forgive. No harm could be done to him so
long as his will was set on righteousness, that is,
so long as he was a sage : the sinner sinned
against his own soul.
As to the absence of pity in the sage the Stoics
themselves must have felt some difficulty there,
since we find Epictetus recommending his hearers
to show grief out of sympathy for another, but
to be careful not to feel it.1 The inexorability
of the sage was a mere consequence of his calm
reasonableness, which would lead him to take
the right view from the first. Lastly, the sage
would never be stirred to anger. For why should
it stir his anger to see another in his ignorance
injuring himself?
One more touch has yet to be added to the
apathy of the sage. He was impervious to won
der. 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-
dwellers, no hot springs, no spouting jets of fire.2
From the absence of passion it is but a step
1 Ench. 16. 2 D.L. vii. § 123.
70
ETHIC
to the absence of error. So we pass now to the
infallibility of the sage — a monstrous doctrine,
which was never broached in the schools before
Zeno.1 The sage, it was maintained, held no
opinions,2 he never repented of his conduct,3 he
was never deceived in anything. Between the
daylight of knowledge and the darkness of
nescience Plato had interposed the twilight of
opinion, wherein men walked for the most part.
Not so however the Stoic sage. Of him it might
be said, as Charles Lamb said of the Scotchman
with whom he so imperfectly sympathised : ' His
understanding is always at its meridian — you
never see the first dawn, the early streaks. He
has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises,
guesses, misgivings, half -intuitions, semi -con
sciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts,
embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain
or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never
falls upon him.' Opinion, Avhether in the form
of an ' ungripped assent ' or of a ' weak supposi
tion' was alien from the mental disposition of
the serious man.4 With him there was no hasty
1 Cic. Acad. Pr. § 77.
2 D.L. vii. §§ 121, 177, 201 ; Stob. ii. 230; Cic. Acad. Post,
§ 42, Pr. §§ 54, 59, 66, 77, pro Mur. §§ 61, 62 ; Lact. Div. Inst.
iii. 4. 3 Cic. Mur. § 61 ; D.L. vii. § 122 ; Stob. ii. 230-234.
•» Stob. Eel. ii. 230.
71
STOICISM
or premature assent of the understanding, no
forgetfulness, no distrust. He never allowed
himself to be overreached or deluded ; never had
need of an arbiter ; never was out in his reckon
ing nor put out by another.1 No urbane man
ever wandered from his way, or missed his mark,
or saw wrong, or heard amiss, or erred in any
of his senses; he never conjectured nor thought
better of a thing; for the one was a form of
imperfect assent, and the other a sign of previous
precipitancy. There was with him no change,
no retractation, and no tripping. These things
were for those whose dogmas could alter.2 After
this it is almost superfluous for us to be assured
that the sage never got drunk. Drunkenness,
as Zeno pointed out, involved babbling, and of
that the sage would never be guilty.3 He would
not, however, altogether eschew banquets. In
deed, the Stoics recognised a virtue under the
name of ' conviviality,' which consisted in the
proper conduct of them.4 It was said of Chry-
sippus that his demeanour was always quiet,
even if his gait were unsteady, so that his house
keeper declared that only his legs were drunk.6
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 232.
2 Ibid. 234. 3 Ibid. 224.
4 Ibid. 118; D.L. vii. § 118; Sen. Ep. 123, § 15.
5 D.L. vii. § 183.
72
ETHIC
There were pleasantries even within the school
on this subject of the infallibility of the sage.
Aristo of Chios, while seceding on some other
matters, held fast to the dogma that the sage
never opined.1 Whereupon Perseus played a
trick upon him. He made one of two twin
brothers deposit a sum of money with him and
the other call to reclaim it. The success of the
trick however only went to establish that Aristo
was not the sage, an admission which each of the
Stoics seems to have been ready enough to make
on his own part, as the responsibilities of the
position were so fatiguing.
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.2 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
1 D. L. vii. § 162. 2 Stob. Eel. ii. 204.
73
STOICISM
beyond harm, so also was he above insult. Men
might disgrace themselves by their insolent atti
tude towards his mild majesty, but it was not
in their power to disgrace him.1
As the Stoics had their analogue to the tenet
of final assurance, so had they also to that of
sudden conversion. They held that a man might
become a sage without being at first aware of it.2
The abruptness of the transition from folly to
wisdom was in keeping with their principle that
there was no medium between the two, but it was
naturally a point which attracted the strictures
of their opponents. That a man should be at
one moment stupid and ignorant and unjust and
intemperate, a slave and poor and destitute, at
the next a king, rich and prosperous, temperate
and just, secure in his judgments and exempt
from error, was a transformation, they declared,
which smacked more of the fairy-tales of the
nursery than of the doctrines of a sober philo
sophy.3
1 Stob. Eel. ii. 226.
a Ibid. 236 ; Plut. 1062 B, Com. Not. 9.
3 Plut. 1058 B, St. Abs.
74
CHAPTER V
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, according to the Stoics, two first
principles of all things, the active and the. passive.
The passive was that unqualified being which is
known as Matter. The active was the Logos or
reason in it, which is God. This, it was held,
eternally pervades matter and creates all things.1
This dogma, laid down by Zeno, was repeated
after him by the subsequent heads of the school.
There were then two first principles, but there
were not two causes of things. The active prin
ciple alone was cause; the other was mere
1 D. L. viii. § 134 ; Plut. 878c., Plac. i. 3 ; Stob. Eel. i. 306.
75
STOICISM
material for it to work on — inert, senseless, desti
tute in itself of all shape and qualities, but ready
to assume any qualities or shape.1
Matter was denned as 'that out of which
anything is produced.' 2 The Prime Matter, or
unqualified being, was eternal, and did not admit
of increase or decrease, but only of change. It
was the substance or being of all things that are.3
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.
Both these first principles, it must be under
stood, were conceived of as bodies, though with
out form, the one everywhere interpenetrating
the other.4 To say that the passive principle, or
matter, is a body comes easy to us, because of
the familiar confusion adverted to above. But
how could the active principle, or God, be con
ceived of as a body ? The answer to this question
may sound paradoxical. It is because God is a
spirit. A ' spirit ' in its original sense meant air
i Sen. Ep. 65, §§ 2, 4, 12. 2 D. L. vii. § 150.
3 Stob. Eel. i. 322, 324, 374, 414, 434; D. L. vii. § 150.
4 D. L. vii. § 134.
76
PHYSIC
in motion. Now the active principle was not air,
but it was something which bore an analogy to
it — namely, aether. ^Ether in motion might be
called a ' spirit ' as well as air in motion. It was
in this sense that Chrysippus defined ' the thing
that is ' to be ' a spirit moving itself into and out
of itself or ' spirit moving itself to and fro.'
From the two first principles, which are un-
generated and indestructible, must be distin
guished the four elements, which, though ultimate
for us, yet were produced in the beginning by
God and are destined some day to be reabsorbed
into the divine nature. These with the Stoics
were the same which had been accepted since
Empedocles — namely, earth, air, fire, and water.
The elements, like the two first principles, were
bodies ; unlike them, they were declared to have
shape as well as extension.1
An element was defined as ' that out of which
things at first come into being and into which
they are at last resolved.' 2 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
1 D. L. vii. § 134. 2 jbid. § 136.
77
STOICISM
air, and so on.1 Thus in the human frame the
bones and sinews pertained to earth.
The four qualities of matter — hot, cold, moist,
and dry — were indicative of the presence of the
four elements. Fire was the source of heat, air
of cold, water of moisture, and earth of dry ness.
Between them the four elements made up the
unqualified being called Matter.2 All animals
and other compound natures on earth had in
them representatives of the four great physical
constituents of the universe; but the moon,
according to Chrysippus, consisted only of fire
and air, while the sun was pure fire.3
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.4
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 primacy as entitled it, if the definition
of element were pressed, to be considered alone
1 Stob. Eel. i. 314. 3 D. L. vii. § 137.
3 Stob. i. 314. 4 Plut.,883 A, Plac.-i. 12.
78
PHYSIC
worthy of the name.1 For the three other ele
ments arose out of it and were to be again resolved
into it.
We should obtain a wholly wrong impression
of what Bishop Berkeley calls ' the philosophy of
fire,' if we set before our minds in this connection
the raging element, whose strength is in destruc
tion. Let us rather picture to ourselves as the
type of fire the benign and beatific solar heat, the
quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial life. For
according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire,
the one destructive, the other what we may call
' constructive/ and which he called ' artistic.'
This latter kind of fire, which was known as
aBther, was the substance of the heavenly bodies,
as it was also of the soul of animals and of
the 'nature' of plants.2 Chrysippus, following
Heraclitus, taught that the elements passed into
one another by a process of condensation and
rarefaction. Fire first became solidified into air,
then air into water, and lastly water into earth.
The process of dissolution took place in the reverse
order, earth being rarefied into water, water into
air, and air into fire.3 It is allowable to see in this
1 Stob. Eel. i. 312, 314.
2 Ibid. 538 ; Cic. N.D. ii. § 41, Acad. Post. § 39.
3 Stob. Eel. i. 314.
79
STOICISM
old-world doctrine an anticipation of the modern
idea of different states of matter — the solid, the
liquid, and the gaseous, with a fourth beyond the
gaseous, which science can still only guess at, and
in which matter seems almost to merge into spirit.
Each of the four elements had its own abode in
the universe. Outermost of all was the ethereal
fire, which was divided into two spheres, first that
of the fixed stars, and next that of the planets.
Below this lay the sphere of air, below this again
that of water, and lowest, or, in other words, most
central of all, was the sphere of earth, the solid
foundation of the whole structure. Water might
be said to be above earth, because nowhere was
there water to be found without earth beneath it,
but the surface of water was always equidistant
from the centre, whereas earth had prominences
which rose above water.1
Extension was essential to body, though shape
was not. A body was ' that which has extension
in three dimensions — length, breadth, and thick
ness.' 2 This was called also a solid body. The
boundary of such a body was a surface,3 which was
1 that which 'possesses length and breadth only, but
not depth.' The boundary of a surface was a line
1 D. L. vii. §§ 137, 155 ; Stob. i. 446.
2 D. L. vii. 135. Cp. Euc. xi. Def. 1. 3 Cp. Euc. i. Def. 2.
80
PHYSIC
which was 'length without breadth/ as in Euclid,
or 'that which has length only.' Lastly, the
boundary of a lino was a point, which was declared
to be 'the smallest sign' (o-rjpetov e'Xa^o-roi/).
This definition is suggestive of the minima
visibilia or coloured points of Hume, but we know
that the Stoics did not allow that a line was made
up of points, or a surface of lines, or a solid of
surfaces. The Stoic definition however has the
advantage over Euclid's in telling us something
positive about a point. The conception of a point
as 'position without magnitude/1 which was
current before the time of Euclid (B.C. 323-283)
is better than either of them.
A geometrical solid is not body, as we know it
or as the Stoics conceived it, for they regarded
the universe as a plenum. < Passivity ' with them
seems to have occupied the place of ' resistance '
with us as the attribute which distinguished body
from void.
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.2 But outside of this lay the infinite void,
1 Arist. Met. iv. 6 § 24. a D. L. vii. § 140
F 81
STOICISM
without beginning, middle or end.1 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 a bound to anything, so neither can
there be any bound to nothing.2 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.
Did the Stoics then regard the universe as
finite or as infinite ? In answering this question
we must distinguish our terms, as they did. The
All, they said, was infinite, but the Whole was
finite. For the All was the cosmos and the void,
whereas the Whole was the cosmos only. This
distinction we may suppose to have originated
with the later members of the school. For
Apollodorus noted the ambiguity of the word All
as meaning,
(1) the cosmos only,
(2) cosmos + void.3
If then by the term ' universe ' we understand the
cosmos, or ordered whole, we must say that the
i Plut 883 F, Plac. i. 18 ; 1054 B, Sto. Repug. 44 ; Stub.
Eel. i. 382. 2 Stob. Eel. i. 392.
3 Plut. 886 C, Plac. ii. 1 ; D. L. vii. § 143.
82
PHYSIC
Stoics regarded the universe as finite. All being
and all body, which was the same thing with
being, had necessarily bounds; it was only not
being which was boundless.1
Another distinction, due this time to Chry-
sippus himself, which the Stoics found it con
venient to draw, was between the three words
' void/ ' place ' and 'space.' Void was denned as
' the absence of body ' ; place was that which was
occupied by body ; the term ' space ' was reserved
for that which was partly occupied and partly
unoccupied.2 As there was no corner of the
cosmos unfilled by body, space, it will be seen,
was another name for the All. Place was com
pared to a vessel that was full, void to one that
was empty, and space to the vast wine- cask,3 such
as that in which Diogenes made his home, which
was kept partly full, but in which there was
always room for more. The last comparison must
of course not be pressed. For, if space be a cask,
it is one without top, bottom, or sides.
But while the Stoics regarded our universe as
an island of being in an ocean of void, they did
not admit the possibility that other such islands
1 Stob. i. 392.
2 Ibid. 382; Plut. 884 A, Plac. i. 20; Sext. Emp PH
iij- 12*- s Stob. Eel. i. 392.
83
STOICISM
might exist beyond our ken. The spectacle of
the starry heavens, which presented itself nightly
to their gaze in all the brilliancy of a southern
sky— that was all there was of being ; beyond that
lay nothingness. Democritus or the Epicureans
might dream of other worlds, but the Stoics
contended for the unity of the cosmos,1 as
staunchly as the Mahometans for the unity of
God ; for with them the cosmos was God.
In shape they conceived of it as spherical, on
the ground that the sphere was the perfect figure,
and was also the best adapted for motion.2 Not
that the universe as a whole moved. The earth
lay at its centre, spherical and motionless, and
round it coursed the sun, moon, and planets, fixed
each in its several sphere, as in so many con
centric rings, while the outermost ring of all,
which contained the fixed stars, wheeled round
the rest with an inconceivable velocity.
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
1 Plut. 879 A, Plac. i. 5; Stob. Eel. i. 496; D.L. vii. § 143.
2 Stob. Eel. i. 356 ; Plut. 879 D, 886 C, Plac. ii. 2 ; D.L. vii.
§139.
84
PHYSIC
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-
going ' nature. It appears, then, that the upward
and downward tendencies of the elements were
held to neutralise one another, and so leave the
universe devoid of weight.1
The beauty of the universe was a topic on
which the Stoics delighted to descant. This was
manifest from its form, its colour, its size, and its
embroidered vesture of stars.2 Its form was that
of a sphere, which was as perfect among solid as
the circle among plane figures, and for the same
reason, namely, that every point on the circumfer
ence was equidistant from the centre.3 Its colour
was in the main the deep azure of the heavens,
darker and more lustrous than purple, indeed the
only hue intense enough to reach our eyes at all
: Stob. Eel. i. 406, 408. 2 Plut§ 879 D> plac | 6
3 Cic. N,D. ii. §47.
85
STOICISM
through such a vast interjacent tract of air.1 In
size, which is an essential element of beauty, it
was of course beyond compare. And then there
was the glory of
1 the star-eyed flash of heaven,
Time's fair embroidery, work of cunning hand.5 a
The universe was the only thing which was
perfect in itself;3 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,4
unless man could be deemed so, who was born to
contemplate the universe and imitate its perfec
tions.5 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 per
vaded 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
1 Plut. 879 D, Plac. i. 6.
2 S.E. adv. M. ix. 54. 3 Cic. N.D. ii. § 37.
4 Plut. 1055 F, Sto. Repug. 44. D Cic. N.D. ii. § 37.
86
PHYSIC
world -soul. The human soul presents itself not
only as intellect, but also in the lower manifesta
tions 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
ha'ir; 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.1 In
the same way the world- soul displayed itself in
rational beings as intellect, in the lower animals
as mere soul, in plants as nature or growth, and
in inorganic substances as ' holding ' or cohesion.2
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.3
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.4 What animated them was
1 D.L. vii. § 139.
2 S.E. adv. M. ix. 81; Philo, i. 71, Leg. All. 7; ii. 496,
Incor. Mund. § 10 ; ii. 606, de Mund. § 4 ; Plut. 451 de Virt.
Mor. 12.
3 Philo, i. 71, Leg. All. ii. §7.
4 Plut. 910 B, Plac. v. 26; M. Ant. vi. 14.
87
STOICISM
'nature' or, as we have called it above, 'growth.'1
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.'2 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.3 In the widest sense Nature was
another name for Providence, or the principle
which held the universe together,4 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, effect
ing 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
c spirit/ and, as such, a body. It was a body of a
less subtle essence than soul.5 Similarly, when
2 D.L. vii. § 156 ; Cic. N.D. ii. § 57; Plut. 881 E, Plac. i. 6.
3 D.L. vii. § 149 ; Cic. N.D. ii. § 58.
4 D.L. vii. § 148. 5 Plut. 1052 F, Sto. Repug. 41.
88
PHYSIC
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
silver ' whiteness.' Not only solidity then, but also
colours, which Zeno called ' the first schematisms '
of matter 1 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.2
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.3
The cosmos, as identical with God, was described
as 'an individual made up of all being, who is
incorruptible and ungenerated, the fashioner of
1 Plut. 883 C, Plac. i. 15 ; Stob. Eel. i. 364.
2 Plut. 1054 A, Sto. Repug. 43.
3 D.L. vii. §§ 137, 138 ; Bus. Pr. Ev, xv. 15, §§ 1, 2.
89
STOICISM
the ordered frame of the universe, who at certain
periods of time absorbs all being into himself and
again generates it from himself.'1 Thus the
cosmos on its external side was doomed to perish,
and the mode of its destruction was to be by fire,
a doctrine which has been stamped upon the
world's belief down to the present day. What
was to bring about this consummation was the
soul of the universe becoming too big for its body,
which it would eventually swallow up altogether.2
In the ' efflagration,' when everything went back
to the primeval tether, the universe would be pure
soul and alive equally through and through. In
this subtle and attenuated state it would require
more room than before, and so expand into the
void, contracting again when another period of
cosmic generation had set in. Hence the Stoic
definition of the Void or Infinite as ' that into
which the cosmos is resolved at the efflagration.'
In this theory of the contraction of the universe
out of an ethereal state and ultimate return to
the same condition one sees a resemblance to the
modern scientific hypothesis of the origin of our
planetary system out of the solar nebula and its
predestined end in the same. Especially is this
1 D.L. vii. § 137.
a Plut. 1052 C, Sto. Rcpug. 39, 1053 B, Sto. Repug. 41.
90
PHYSIC
the case with the form in which the theory was
held by Cleanthes, who pictured the heavenly
bodies as hastening to their own destruction by
dashing themselves, like so many gigantic moths,
into the sun. Cleanthes however did not conceive
mere mechanical force to be at work in this
matter. The grand apotheosis of suicide which he
foresaw was a voluntary act; for the heavenly
bodies were Gods, and were willing to lose their
own in a larger life.1
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,2
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, Avhich was
to it as body. In the efilagration the two would
be fused into one in the single substance of
a3ther.3 And then in the fulness of time there
1 Plut. 1075 D, Com. Not. 31.
2 Sen. Ep. 9, § 16.
3 Plut. 1077 D, Com. Not. 36; Philo. ii. 501, Incor. Mund.,
§14.
91
STOICISM
would be a restitution of all things. Everything
would come round again exactly as it had been
before.1
Alter erit turn Tiphys, et altera quag vehat Argo
delectos heroas ; erunt etiam altera bella,
atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles.
To us who have been taught to pant for pro
gress, 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 seonian Maelstrom.2
1 Stob. Eel. i. 414 ; Lact. Div. Inst. vii. 23 ; Numenius in
Eus. Pr. Ev. xv. 18.
2 Sen. Ep. 30, § 11 j 36, § 10 ; 54, § 5 ; 71, §§ 13, 14.
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
WHEN Socrates declared before his judges that
' there is no evil to a good man either in life
or after death, nor are his affairs neglected by
the gods/ 1 he sounded the keynote of Stoicism,
with its two main doctrines of virtue as the only
good, and the government of the world by Pro
vidence. Let us weigh his words, lest we in
terpret them by the light of a comfortable
modern piety. A great many things that are
commonly called evil may and do happen to a
good man in this life, and therefore presumably
misfortunes may also overtake him in any other
life that there may be. The only evil that can
never befall him is vice, because that would
be a contradiction in terms. Unless therefore
Socrates was uttering idle words on the most
solemn occasion of his life, he must be taken
1 Plat. Apol. 41 D.
93
STOICISM
to have meant that there is no evil but vice,
which implies that there is no good but virtue.
Thus we are landed at once in the heart of the
Stoic morality. To the question why, if there
be a providence, so many evils happen to good
men, Seneca unflinchingly replies : ' No evil can
happen to a good man; contraries do not mix.'
God has removed from the good all evil, because
he has taken from them crimes and sins, bad
thoughts and selfish designs, and blind lust and
grasping avarice. He has attended well to them
selves, but he cannot be expected to look after
their luggage; they relieve him of that care by
being indifferent about it.1 This is the only
form in which the doctrine of divine providence
can be held consistently with the facts of life.
Again, when Socrates on the same occasion ex
pressed his belief that it was not 'permitted by
the divine law for a better man to be harmed
by a worse,' he was asserting by implication the
Stoic position. Neither Meletus nor Anytus could
harm him, though they might have him killed
or banished, or disfranchised. This passage of
the Apology, in a condensed form, is adopted by
Epictetus as one of the watchwords of Stoicism.2
1 Sen. de Prov. 2, 6 ; Cic. Fin. iii. § 29.
2 Epict. Ench. 52.
94
CONCLUSION
There is nothing more distinctive of Socrates
than the doctrine that virtue is knowledge.1
Here too the Stoics followed him, ignoring all
that Aristotle had done in showing the part
played by the emotions and the will in virtue.
Reason was with them a principle of action;
with Aristotle it was a principle that guided
action, but the motive power had to come from
elsewhere.2 Socrates must even be held respon
sible for the Stoic paradox of the madness of all
ordinary folk.3
The Stoics did not owe much to the Peri
patetics. 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 be
sides 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, un
less 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,
1 Xen. Mem. iii. 9, §§ 4,' 5.
2 E. N. vi. 2, § 5. 3 Xen Mem Ui 9 § 6
95
STOICISM
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 environ
ment. 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. That
virtue is the one thing needful would have been
acknowledged by the Peripatetics as well as by
the Stoics, but in a different sense. The Peri
patetics would have meant by it that such things
as health and wealth and honour and family
and friends and country, though good in their
way, were yet not to be compared with goods
of the soul; whereas the Stoics meant literally
that there were no other goods. In practice
the two doctrines would come to the same thing,
since the adherent of either sect would, if true
to his principles, equally sacrifice the lower to
the higher in case of conflict. But the Peri
patetics had the advantage of calling those
things goods which everybody, except for the
sake of argument, acknowledges to be such.
With regard to happiness also they were on the
side of common opinion. Happiness is not
thought of apart from virtue, nor yet apart from
fortune. It has its inner and its outer side.
The Stoics admitted only the inner; the Peri-
CONCLUSION
patetics included the outer also. By confining
happiness to its inner side the Stoics identified
it with virtue. But this is essentially a one
sided view. Happiness is a composite concep
tion. It is like the image seen by Nebuchad
nezzar in his dream, which began in fine gold
and ended in miry clay. So happiness consists in
the main of the pure gold of virtue, but tails off
towards the extremities into meaner materials.
But though we may decline to talk with the
Stoics, demurring to their misuse of language, we
need not refuse to admire the loftiness of their
aspirations. They would fain have had the
image of their sage wrought of fine gold from
head to heel. They felt that no good but the
highest can be satisfying. They were seeking for
a peace which the world cannot give; and they
said to Virtue, as Augustine said to God, ' Our
heart can find no rest, until it rest in thee.' x
They saw that, if happiness depended in any
degree upon externals, the imperturbable serenity
of the sage would be impossible. In truth it is
impossible. Christianity recognised this in post
poning happiness to a future life. But it was the
craving for such perfect peace which led to the
Stoic position. They were convinced also that
1 Conf. i. i.
G 97
STOICISM
the good man must be beloved of God and the
object of His care; but they saw that this was
not so with regard to things external : therefore
they inferred that these were indifferent.1 And,
if indifferent, then despicable ; so that they
needed not to worry about them. They had but
to keep a conscience void of offence, and let other
things look after themselves.2 To take no thought
for the morrow was the outcome of their teaching,
as of the Sermon on the Mount. But the Stoics
were ready to carry out their doctrine to its
logical consequences, and, if food were not forth
coming, to avail themselves of the open door.3
How long virtue lasted, they declared, was beside
the point ; it was the state of mind that counted.
The sage would deem that time pertained not to
him.4 Thus were the Stoics ready to serve God
for nought, asking not even for the wages of
' going on and still to be.' They did not judge of
His providence by the loaves and fishes that fell
to their share, but had the faith which could
exclaim, ' Though He slay me, yet will I trust
Him.' Why should he who possesses the only
good complain of the distribution of things indif-
1 Sen. Ep. 74, § 10. 2 Cic. T. D. v. § 4.
3 Epict. Diss. i. 9, §§ 19, 20 ; Stob. Eel. ii. 198.
4 Sen. Ep. 32, § 4.
98
CONCLUSION
ferent ? The true Stoic, having chosen the better
part, was content to 'be still and murmur not.'
There might be a future life — the Stoics believed
there was— but it never presented itself to them
as necessary to correct the injustice of this.
There was no injustice. Virtue needed no reward,
or could not fail of it, for it could not fail of itself.
Nor could the vicious fail of their punishment, for
that punishment was to have missed the only
good.1
' Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.' 2
Though the Stoics were religious to the point
of superstition, yet they did not invoke the terrors
of theology to enforce the lesson of virtue. Plato
does this even in the very work, the professed
object of which is to prove the intrinsic superi
ority of justice to injustice. But Chrysippus pro
tested against Plato's procedure on this point,
declaring that the talk about punishment by the
gods was mere ' bugaboo.' 3 By the Stoics indeed,
no less than by the Epicureans, fear of the gods
was discarded from philosophy.* The Epicurean
gods took no part in the affairs of men ; the Stoic
God was incapable of anger.
1 Sen- EP- 97, § 14. 2 Pers Sat> Hi 3g
3 Plut. 1040 B, Sto. Repug. 15; Cic. N. D. ii. § 5
4 Cic. Off. iii. § 102.
99
STOICISM
The absence of any appeal to rewards and
punishments was a natural consequence of the
central tenet of the Stoic morality, that virtue is
in itself the most desirable of all things. Another
corollary that flows with equal directness from the
same principle is that it is better to be than to
seem virtuous. Those who are sincerely convinced
that happiness is to be found in wealth or
pleasure or power prefer the reality to the appear
ance of these goods; it must be the same with
him who is sincerely convinced that happiness
lies in virtue. To be just then is the great
desideratum : how many know that you are so is
not to the purpose.1 Far more important than
what others think of you is what you have reason
to think of yourself.2 The same searching spirit
is displayed in the Stoic declaration that ' to be
in lust is sin even without the act.'3 He who
apprehends the force of such philosophy may
well apostrophise it in the words of Cicero : ' One
day well spent and in accordance with thy pre
cepts is worth an immortality of sin.' 4
Despite the want of feeling in which the Stoics
gloried, it is yet true to say that the humanity of
their system constitutes one of its most just
i Sen. Ep. 113, § 32. 2 Ibid. 29, § 11.
s Cic. Fin. iii. § 32. 4 Cic. T. D. v. § 5.
IOO
CONCLUSION
claims on our admiration. They were the first
fully to recognise the worth of man as man ; l
they heralded the reign of peace,2 for which we
are yet waiting; they proclaimed to the world
the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man ; they were convinced of the solidarity of
mankind, and laid down that the interest of one
must be subordinated to that of all.3 The word
'philanthropy/ though not unheard before their
time,4 was brought into prominence by them as a
name for a virtue among the virtues.
Aristotle's ideal state, like the Republic of
Plato, is still an Hellenic city ; Zeno was the first
to dream of a republic which should embrace all
mankind. In Plato's Republic all the material
goods are contemptuously thrown to the lower
classes, all the mental and spiritual reserved for
the higher. In Aristotle's ideal the bulk of the
population are mere conditions, not integral parts,
of the state. Aristotle's callous acceptance of the
existing fact of slavery blinded his eyes to the
wider outlook, which already in his time was
beginning to be taken. His theories of the
natural slave and of the natural nobility of the
1 Cic. Fin. iii. § 63, Off. iii. § 27.
2 Cic. Off. iii. § 25 ; Lact. Div. Inst. vi. § 11.
3 Cic. Off. iii. § 26, Fin. iii. § 64.
4 Plat. Euthph. 3 D ; Xen. Mem. i. 2, § 60.
101
STOICISM
Greeks are mere attempts to justify practice. In
the Ethics there is indeed a recognition of the
rights of man, but it is faint and grudging.
Aristotle there tells us that a slave, as a man,
admits of justice, and therefore of friendship,1
but unfortunately it is not this concession which
is dominant in his system, but rather the reduc
tion of a slave to a living tool by which it is
immediately preceded. In another passage Aris
totle points out that men, like other animals, have
a natural affection for the members of their own
species, a fact, he adds, which is best seen in
travelling.2 This incipient humanitarianism seems
to have been developed in a much more marked
way by Aristotle's followers ; 3 but it is the Stoics
who have won the glory of having initiated
humanitarian sentiment.
Virtue, with the earlier Greek philosophers,
was aristocratic and exclusive. Stoicism, like
Christianity, threw it open to the meanest of
mankind. In the kingdom of wisdom, as in the
kingdom of Christ, there was ' neither barbarian,
Scythian, bond, nor free.' The only true freedom
was to serve philosophy,4 or, which was the same
1 E. N. viii. 11, § 7, 1161* 5-8. a Ibid. 1, § 3, 1155* 20-22.
3 Cic. Acad. Post. i. § 21 ; Stob. Eel. ii. 254.
4 Sen. Ep. 8 § 7, 37 § 4 ; Philo, ii. 451, Q. O. P. L. § 7.
102
CONCLUSION
thing, to serve God ; l and that could be done in
any station in life. The sole condition of com
munion with gods and good men was the pos
session of a certain frame of mind, which might
belong equally to a gentleman, to a freedman, or
to a slave. In place of the arrogant assertion of
the natural nobility of the Greeks, we now hear
that a good mind is the true nobility.2 Birth is
of no importance ; all are sprung from the gods.
1 The door of virtue is shut to no man : it is open
to all, admits all, invites all — free men, freedmen,
slaves, kings, and exiles. Its election is not of
family or fortune; it is content with the bare
man.'3 Wherever there was a human being,
there Stoicism saw a field for well-doing.4 Its
followers were always to have in their mouths
and hearts the well-known line—
' Homo sum, human! nihil a me alienum puto.' 6
Closely connected with the humanitarianism of
the Greeks is their cosmopolitanism.
Cosmopolitanism is a word which has con
tracted rather than expanded in meaning with
the advance of time. We mean by it freedom
1 Sen. Vit. B. 15 § 6. 2 Sen. Ep. 44, § 2.
3 Sen. Ben. iii. 18, § 2. 4 Sen. Vit. B. 24, § 2.
5 Ter. Heaut. 77 ; Cic. Leg. i. § 33 ; Sen. Ep. 95, § 53.
103
STOICISM
from the shackles of nationality. The Stoics
meant this and more. The city of which they
claimed to be citizens was not merely this round
world on which we dwell, but the universe at
large with all the mighty life therein contained.
In this city, the greatest of earth's cities, Rome,
Ephesus, or Alexandria, were but houses.1 To be
exiled from one of them was only like changing
your lodgings,2 and death but a removal from
one quarter to another. The freemen of this
city were all rational beings— sages on earth and
the stars in heaven. Such an idea was thoroughly
in keeping with the soaring genius of Stoicism.
It was proclaimed by Zeno in his Republic, and
after him by Chrysippus and his followers.3 It
caught the imagination of alien writers, as of
the author of the Peripatetic De Mundo (vi. § 36),
who was possibly of Jewish origin, and of Philo 4
and St. Paul,5 who were certainly so. Cicero does
not fail to make use of it on behalf of the Stoics ; 6
Seneca revels in it; Epictetus employs it for
1 Sen. Ep. 102, § 21 ; M. Ant. iii. 11.
2 Cic. Parad. § 18.
3 Pint. 329 A, Alex. Mag. F. aut V. 16, 1076 F, Com. Not
34 ; Cic. N. D. ii. § 154.
4 i. 1, Mund. Op. § 1 ; i. 34, Mund. Op. § 49 ; i. 161, Cher.
§ 34 ; ii. 10, Abr. § 13 ; ii. 486, V. C. § 11.
5 Phil. iii. 20. s Fin. iiL § 64
104
CONCLUSION
edification; and Marcus Aurelius finds solace in
his heavenly citizenship for the cares of an
earthly ruler — as Antoninus indeed his city is
Rome, but as a man it is the universe.1
The philosophy of an age cannot perhaps be
inferred from its political conditions with that
certainty which some writers assume ; still there
are cases in which the connexion is obvious. On
a wide view of the matter we may say that the
opening up of the East by the arms of Alexander
was the cause of the shifting of the philosophic
standpoint from Hellenism to cosmopolitanism.
If we reflect that the Cynic and Stoic teachers
were mostly foreigners in Greece, we shall find
a very tangible reason for the change of view.
Greece had done her work in educating the world,
and the world was beginning to make payment
in kind. Those who had been branded as natural
slaves were now giving laws to philosophy. The
kingdom of wisdom was suffering violence at the
hands of barbarians.
1 M. Ant. iv. 4, vi. 44, x. 15.
105
DATES AND AUTHORITIES
B.C.
Death of Socrates. ..... 399
Death of Plato 347
ZENO. ...... 347-275
Studied under Crates, . . . . 325
Studied under Stilpo andJXenocrates, . 325-315
Began teaching. .... 315
Epicurus 341-270
Death of Aristotle 322
Death of Xenocrates. . . . • 315
CLEANTHES. . . Succeeded Zeno 275
CHRYSIPPUS. . . Died 207
ZENO OF TARSUS. . . Succeeded'Chrysippus —
Decree of the Senate forbidding the teaching of
philosophy at Home. . .161
DIOGENES OF BABYLON.
Embassy of the philosophers to Home. . . 155
ANTIPATER OF TARSUS.
PAN^ETIUS. Accompanied Africanus on his mission
to the East. ... 143
His treatise on 'Propriety' was the basis of
Cicero's ',De Officiis.'
The Scipionic Circle at Rome.
This coterie was deeply tinctured with Stoicism.
107
STOICISM
B.C..
Its chief members were— The younger Afri-
canus, the younger Lselius, L. Furius Philus,
Manilius, Spurius Mummius, P. Rutilius
Rufus, Q. ^Elius Tubero, Polybius, and
Paneetius.
Suicide of Blossius of Cunise, the adviser of Tiberius
Gracchus, and a disciple of Antipater of Tarsus. . 130
Mnesarchus, a disciple of Pansetius, was teaching at
Athens when the orator Crassus visited that city. Ill
HECATON OF RHODES.
A great Stoic writer, a disciple of Pansetius,
and a friend of Tubero.
POSIDONIUS. . . • About 128-44
Born at Apameia in Syria,
Became a citizen of Rhodes,
Represented the Rhodians at Rome, . 86
Cicero studied under him at Rhodes, . 78
Came to Rome again at an advanced age, 51
Cicero's philosophical works. . . • 54-44
These are a main authority for our knowledge
of the Stoics. A.D.
Philo of Alexandria came on an embassy to Rome. 39
The works of Philo are saturated with Stoic-
ideas, and he displays an exact acquaintance
with their terminology.
SENECA.
Exiled to Corsica, . 41
Recalled from exile, . 49>
Forced by Nero to commit suicide. . 6&
His Moral Epistles and philosophical works
generally are written from the Stoic stand
point, though somewhat affected by Eclec
ticism.
108
DATES AND AUTHORITIES
A.D.
Plutarch. ...... Flor. 80
The Philosophical works of Plutarch which
have most bearing upon the Stoics are —
De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute,
De Virtute Morali,
De Placitis Philosophorum,
De Stoicoruui Repugnantiis,
Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere,
De Communibus Notitiis.
EPICTETUS, ...... Flor. 90
A freedman of Epaphroditus,
Disciple of C. Musonius Rufus,
Lived and taught at Rome until A.D. 90, when
the philosophers were expelled by Domitian.
Then retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, where
he spent the rest of his life.
Epictetus wrote nothing himself, but his Dis
sertations, as preserved by Arrian, from
which the Encheiridion is excerpted, contain
the most pleasing presentation that we have •
of the moral philosophy of the Stoics.
C. MUSONIUS RUFUS.
Banished to Gyaros, .... 65
Returned to Rome, .... 68
Tried to intervene between the armies of
Vitellius and Vespasian, ... 69
Procured the condemnation of Publius Celer
(Tac. H. iv. 10 ; Juv. Sat. iii. 116), .
Q. JUNIUS RUSTICUS. .... Cos. 162
Teacher of M. Aurelius, who learnt from him
to appreciate Epictetus.
109
STOICISM
A.D.
M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS. . . . Emperor 161-180
Wrote the book commonly called his 'Medi
tations ' under the title of ' to himself.'
He may be considered the last of the Stoics.
Three later authorities for the Stoic teaching are—
Diogenes Laertius, . . . 200 ?
Sextus Empiricus, . . 225 ?
Stobceus, . . 500?
Modern works —
Von Arnim's edition of the ' Fragmenta Stoi-
coruni 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.'
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
«N.
GO
fcO
o
00
p
o
6
+>
&
o
ui
University of Toronto
Library
DO NOT
REMOVE
THE
CARD
FROM
THIS
POCKET
Acme Library Card Pocket
Hotter Pat. "Ref. Index File"
Made by LIBRARY BUREAU