Classic Audiobook Collection - Stoicism by George Stock ~ Full Audiobook [philosophy]

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Stoicism by George Stock audiobook. Genre: philosophy This short book is part of the Philosophies Ancient and Modern series, which attempts to make Western philosophy more accessible to the general public. In this volume, George Stock provides a concise primer on Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that maintained that the universe is governed entirely by fate, and that humans can achieve happiness only by cultivating a calm acceptance of the vicissitudes of life. Among the Stoics of the Greek and Roman world were its founder, Zeno, the former slave Epictetus, and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. George Stock discusses not only the Stoic ethics, but also less well-known aspects of Stoicism, such as its division of the branches of philosophy, its account of logic, and its natural philosophy. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:12:40) Chapter 02 (00:18:28) Chapter 03 (00:44:41) Chapter 04 (01:34:32) Chapter 05 (01:58:20) Chapter 06 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stoicism by George Stock Chapter 1 Philosophy Among the Greeks and Romans Among the Greeks and Romans of the Classical Age Philosophy occupying the place taken by religion among ourselves. Their appeal was to reason, not to revelation. To what, asks Cicero in his offices, are we to look for training in virtue, if not to philosophy? 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 appeal to reason must be content to wait till reason is developed. We are born into the Eastern, Western, or Anglican Communion, or some other denomination, but it was of his own free choice that the serious-minded young Greek or Roman embraced the tenets of one of the great sects which divided the world of philosophy. The motive which led him to do so in the first instance may have been merely the influence of a friend or a discourse from some eloquent speaker,

but the choice, once made, was his own choice, and he adhered to it as such. Conversions from one sect to another were of quite rare occurrence. A certain Dionysius of Heraclea, who went over from the Stoics to the Cyreneics, was ever afterwards known as the deser. It was as difficult to be independent in philosophy as it is with us to be independent in politics. When a young man joined a school, he committed himself to all its opinions, not only as to the end of life, which was the main point of division, but as to all questions on all subjects. The Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics from the Epicurean. He differed also in his theology and his physics,

and his metaphysics. Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought young men unfit to hear moral philosophy. And yet it was a question, or rather the question, of moral philosophy, the answer to which decided the young man's opinions on all other points. The language which Cicero sometimes uses about the seriousness of the choice made in early life and how a young man gets entrammeled by a school before he is really able to judge, reminds us of the seriousness of the choice made in early life, reminds us of what we hear said nowadays about the danger of a young man's taking orders before his opinions are formed. To this, it was replied that 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 analog 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 philosophy did not, above all things, require the philosophic mind. But in those days it was probably the case, as it is now, that if a man did not form speculative opinions in youth, the pressure of affairs would not leave him leisure to do so later. The lifespan of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was from BC 347 to 275. He did not begin teaching till 315, at the mature age of 40. 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 Pythagorean's on the mystical

properties of numbers, Heraclitus had propounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Lucipus, had struck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raised questions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all the freedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically worked them out. The later schools did not add much to the body of philosophy. What they did was to emphasize different sides of the doctrine of their predecessors, and to drive views to their logical consequences. The great lesson of Greek philosophy is that it is where, worthwhile to do right, irrespective of reward and punishment, and regardless of the shortness of life. This lesson the Stoics so enforced by the earnestness of their lives and the influence of their

moral teaching, that it has become associated more particularly with them. Cicero, though he had always classed himself as an academic, exclaims in one place that he is afraid the Stoics are the only philosophers, and whenever he is combating Epicureanism, his language, is that of a Stoic. Some of Virgil's most eloquent passages seem to be inspired by Stoic speculation. Even Horace, despite his banter about the sage, in his serious moods, borrows the language of the Stoics. It was they who inspired the highest flights of declamatory eloquence in Percius and Juvenal. Their moral philosophy affected the world through Roman law, the great masters of which were brought up under its influence. So all-pervasive indeed was this moral philosophy of the Stoics

that it was read by the Jews of Alexandria into Moses, under the veil of allegory, and was declared to be the inner meaning of the Hebrew scriptures. If the Stoics then did not add much to the body of philosophy, they did the great work in popularizing 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 what that art should be. Widely as the two schools were opposed to one another, they also had 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, and tended to become feebler as time went on. Both were new departures from pre-existent schools. Stoicism was bred out of cynicism, as Epicureanism out of Cyreneusism. Both were content to fall back for their physics upon the pre-Socratic schools,

the one adopting the fire philosophy of Heraclitus, the other the atomic theory of Democritus. Both were in strong reaction against the abstractions of Plato and Aristotle, and would tolerate nothing but concrete reality. The Stoics were quite as materialistic, in their own way, as the Epicureans. With regard, indeed, to the nature of the highest good, we may, with Seneca, represent the difference between the two schools, as a question of the senses against the intellect. But we shall 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, Anaxagoras in speculation, Socrates and wisdom, Aristotle in the practice of virtue with some amount of favor from fortune, Aristippus simply in pleasure. These were the opinions of the philosophers. But besides these, there were the opinions of ordinary men, as shown by their lives rather than by their language. Zeno's contribution to thought on the subject does not at first sight appear illuminating. He said that the end was, to live consistently. the implication doubtless being that no life but the passionless life of reason could ultimately be consistent with itself. Cleanthes, his immediate successor in the school, is credited with having added the words with nature,

thus completing the well-known stoic formula that the end is to live consistently with nature. It was assumed by the Greeks that the ways of nature were the ways of pleasantness, and that all her paths were peace. This may seem to us a startling assumption, but that is because we do not mean by nature the same thing as they did. We connect the term with the origin of a thing. They connected it rather with the end. By the natural state, we mean a state of savagery.

They meant the highest civilization. We mean, by a thing's nature, what it is or has been. They meant what it ought to become under the most favorable conditions. not the sour crab, but the mellow glory of the Hesperides, worthy to be guarded by a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks the natural apple. Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that the state is a natural product, because it is evolved out of social relations which exist by nature. Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous term to the Greeks no less than to ourselves, but in the sense with which we are now concerned, the nature of anything, was defined by the peripatetics as the end of its becoming.

Another definition of theirs puts the matter still more clearly. What each thing is when its growth has been completed, that we declare to be the nature of each thing. Following out this conception, the Stoics identified 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 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? End of Chapter 1

Chapter 2 of Stoicism by George Stock. This is a Libervox recording. All Libravox recordings are on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Leon Meyer Stoicism by George Stock. Chapter 2. Division of Philosophy

Philosophy was defined by the Stoics as the knowledge of things divine and human. It was divided into three departments, logic, ethic, and physics. This division indeed was in existence before their time, 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 dissensions from this three-fold division. For what they did, was to substitute for the Stoic logic, a logic of their own, dealing with the notions derived from sense, much in the same way as Bacon, substituted his Novum organum for the organon of Aristotle.

Clanthes, we are told, recognize 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 a form and expression of knowledge, physics 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

departments should be studied, we have had preserved to us the actual words of Chrysippus in his fourth book on lives. Quote, first of all then, it seems to me that, as has been rightly said by the ancients, there are three heads under which the speculations 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 the name of completions to the instruction delivered on this subject." Unquote. That this order, however, 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. 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. But that Chrysippus did teach the logical dependence 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 thesis, 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 in the administration of the universe. For it is not a subject of good and evil, or the virtues, to these that 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 speculation is taken in solely with a view to the distinction between good and evil. 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 favorite metaphor with the school, compare philosophy to a fertile vineyard or orchard. Ethic was the good fruit, physic the tall plants, and logic the strong wall. The wall existed only to guard the trees, and the trees only to produce the fruit. Or again, philosophy was likened to an egg, of which ethic was the yoke, containing the chick, physic the white, which formed its nourishment, while logic was the hard

outside shell. Posedonius, 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. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Stoicism, by George This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Leon Meyer

Stoicism by George Stock Chapter 3. 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 Skepsis 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 Stratto, the successor of Theophrastus, who specialized in natural science, the school had lost its comprehensiveness. Cicero even finds it consonant with dramatic propriety to make Cato charge the later parapetetics, 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 to be a logic among the gods, it would be no other than the Chrysippian. But if the Stoics were strong in logic, they were weak in rhetoric. This strength and weakness were characteristic of the school at all periods. Cato is the only Roman Stoic to whom Cic accords the praise of real eloquence. In the dying accents of the school, as we hear them in Marcus Aurelius, the Imperial Sage counts it a thing to be thankful for that he had learnt to abstain from rhetoric, poetic, and elegance of diction. The reader, however, cannot help wishing that he had taken some means to diminish the

crabbedness of his style. If a lesson were wanted in the importance of sacrificing to the graces, it might be found in the fact that the early Stoic writers, despite their logical subtlety have all perished, and that their remains have to be sought for so largely in the pages of Cicero. In speaking of logic, as one of the three departments of philosophy, we must bear in mind that the term was one of much wider meaning than it is with us. It included rhetoric, poetic, and grammar, as well as dialectic, or logic proper, to say nothing of disquisitions on the senses and the intellect, which we should now refer to psychology.

the school it has been said was weak in rhetoric nevertheless clianthes 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 they followed the well-established division of rhetoric into deliberative judicial and demonstrative recognizing 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. Among the requisites of the orator, they enumerated invention, style, arrangement, and delivery. A fifth requisite, namely memory, is usually added, 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 matters. and conclusion.

With regard to invention, Cicero complains of the Stoics for their neglect of it as an art. They had nothing corresponding to the topics of Aristotle to supply material for dialectic, nor any orators Voddy Makeum, 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 defined 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. 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 physical, ethical, and logical. 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. Instead of throwing in poetic and grammar with rhetoric, the Stoic subdivided dialectic into the part which dealt with the meaning and the part which dealt with the sound, or as Chrysippus phrased it, concerning significance and significates. Under the former came the treatment of the alphabet, of the parts of speech, of solacism, of barbaricism, of barbaric, of poems, of amphibiles, of meter and music, a list which seems at first sight a little mixed, but in which we can recognize the general features of grammar, with its departments of phonology,

accidents, and prosody. The treatment of solacism and barbarism and grammar corresponded to that of fallacies and logic. With regard to the alphabet, it is worth noting that the Stoics recognize seven vowels and six mutes. 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 a common term. There were reckoned to be five virtues of speech, Hellenism, clearness, conciseness, propriety, distinction. By Hellenism was meant speaking good Greek. Distinction was defined to be a diction which avoided homeliness.

Over against these, there were two comprehensive vices, barbarism and solacism, the one being an offense against accidents, 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 utterance of paganism is Cleanthes' hymn to Zeus, and that Eratus, among the Greeks, and among the Romans, Manilius, Sinica, Perseus, and Juvenal, may be set down to the credit of the school. Enfibbley was defined as Diction which signifies two or more things in the strict prose sense of the terms and in the same language. It was thus a general name for ambiguity.

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 first. 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. Under the last head would come a question. Ancient logic was essentially concerned with this as being conducted 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 can 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 census had to be corrected, and if definitions were not founded on true ideas, our grasp of reality would be enfeebled from the first. With the Stoics then, as with ourselves, the difficulties of logic came at the beginning. They boldly plunged into the subject with the disquisition on sense impressions, feeling that if truth were to be made good, it must be by reliance on the validity of the senses. 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 propositions, their parts and varieties, very much disguised by strange phraseology. Then come moods and syllogisms, and last of all, fallacies. 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. The earliest characters inscribed upon it were the impressions of sense, which the Greeks called fantasies.

A fantasy was defined by Zeno as an impression in the soul. Clanthes was content to take this definition in its literal. sense, and believe that the soul was impressed by external objects as waxed by a signet ring. Pricippus, however, found a difficulty here, and preferred to interpret the master's saying to mean an alteration or change in the soul. He figured to himself the soul as receiving a modification from every external object which acts upon it, just as the air receives countless strokes when many people are speaking at once. Further, he declared that in receiving an impression, the soul was purely passive, and that the fantasy revealed not only its own existence,

but that also of its cause, just as light displays itself and the things that are in it. 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 fantasy, and then the understanding, having the power of utterance, expresses in speech the affection it receives from the object. The cause of the fantasy was called the fantast, 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 arestes sees in his frenzy.

How then was the impression, which had reality behind it, to be distinctly. 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 vividness of the former, so did they. Only Hume saw no necessity to go beyond the impression, whereas the Stoics did. Certain impressions they maintained carried with them an irresistible conviction of their own reality, and this not-nought-n't-n't-n't. merely in the sense that they existed, but also that they were referable to an external cause. These were called gripping fantasies. Such a fantasy did not need proof of its own existence,

or of that of its object. It possessed self-evidence. Its occurrence was attended with yielding an ascent on the part of the soul, for it is as natural for the soul to assent to the self-evident, as it is for it to pursue its proper good. The ascent to a gripping fantasy was called comprehension, as indicating the firm hold that the soul thus took of reality. A gripping fantasy was defined as, one which was stamped and impressed from an existing object, in virtue of that object itself, in such a way as it could not be from a non-existent object. The clause, in 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.

There the impression was derived from an existing object, but not from that object as such, but as colored by the imagination of the percipient. The criterion of truth, then, was no other than the gripping fantasy. Such, at least, was the doctrine of the earlier Stoics, but the later added a saving clause when there is no impediment. For they were pressed by their opponents, with such imaginary cases as that of Admetus, seeing his wife before him in very deed, and yet not believing it to be her. But here there was an impediment. Admetus did not believe that the dead could rise. Again, Minnelaus did not believe in the real

Helen, when he found her on the island of Pharos. But here again there was an impediment, for Minelais could not have expected to know that he had been for ten years fighting for a phantom. them. When, however, there was no such impediment, then, they said, the gripping fantasy did indeed deserve its name, for it almost took men by the hair of the head and dragged them to assent. So far we have used fantasy only of real or imaginary impressions of sense, but the term was not thus restricted by the Stoics, who divided fantasies into sensible and not sensible. The latter came through the understanding, and were of bodily. things, which could only be grasped by reason. 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. 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 demonstrative conclusions, such as that the gods exist, and that they exercise providence. Here we are reminded of Locke's declaration, tis as certain that there is a god, as that the opposite angles,

made by the intersection of two straight lines, are equal. The Stoics indeed had great 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. One, by presentation, as objects of sense. Two, by likeness, as the idea of Socrates from his picture.

3. By analogy, that is, by increase or decrease, as ideas of giants and pygmies from men, or as the notion of the center 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. 8. By nature, as the notion of the just and the good. 9. By privation, as handless.

The Stoics resembled Locke again in endeavoring 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 fantasies which was not liable to be changed by reason. On a first hearing, these definitions might seem to be limited to sense knowledge, but if we bethink ourselves of the wider meanings of comprehension and of fantasy, we see that the definitions apply, as they were meant to apply, to the minds grasp upon a force of a demonstration, no less than upon the existence of a physical object.

Zeno, with that touch of oriental symbolism which characterized 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 fantasy. Then contracting the fingers a little, that is a scent. 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 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 passage money, they become fair. Notions were arrived at partly by nature, partly by teaching and study. the former kinds of notions were called preconceptions the latter went merely by the generic name out of the general ideas which nature imparts to us reason was perfected about the age of fourteen at the time when the voice its outward and visible sign attains its full development and when the human animal is complete in other respects as being able to reproduce its kind thus reason which united us to the gods was not according to the stone a pre-existent principle, but a gradual development out of sense. It might truly be said that,

with them, the senses were the intellect. Being was confined by the Stoics to body, a bold assertion of which we shall meet the consequences later. At present it is sufficient to 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. One, simply as a body, two, as a body of a particular kind, three, as a body in a particular state, four as a body in a particular relation. Hence result, the four stoic categories of substrates such like, so disposed, so related. But the bodiless would not be thus conjured out of existence, for what was to be made of such things as the meaning of words, time, place, and the infinite void?

Even the Stoics did not assign body to these, and yet they had to be recognized and spoken of. The difficulty was got over by the invention of the higher category of somewhat, which should include both body and the bodiless. time was a somewhat, and so was space, though neither of them possessed being. In the stoic treatment of the proposition, grammar 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. This we shall render by dict. A dict, then, was defined as that would subsist in correspondence with a rational fantasy. A dict 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. 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 and motion, and therefore a body, but the meaning of them is not a body, but an announcement about a body, which is quite a different thing. 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 scholastic age, and the Stoics refined and distinguished to their heart's content. As regards immediate inference, a subject which has been run into subtleties among ourselves, Chrysippus estimated that the changes which could be wrung 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. With us, the affirmative proposition is more prolificant 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 super-negative 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 super-negative. syllogism, such as the modus ponens in a conjunctive. Their type of reasoning was, if A, then B, but A, therefore B. The important part played by conjunctive propositions and their logic, led the Stoics to formulate the following rule with regard to the material quality of such propositions. Truth can 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 consequences 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, 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 a frequent occurrence in the accounts left us of their arguments. Take, for instance, the syllogism wherewith 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. Therefore, a good man will not get drunk. The chain argument, which we wrongly call the Syriates, was also a favorite resource with the Stoics. If a single syllogism did not suffice to argument into virtue, surely a condensed series must be effectual. And so they demonstrated the sufficiency of wisdom for happiness as follows. The wise man is temperate. The temperate is constant. The constant is unperturbed. The unperturbed is free from sorrow. Whoso is free from sorrow is happy. Therefore, the wise man is happy. The above will serve as a specimen of the purely verbal arguments which the Stoics were pleased to put forward. Cicero is fond of comparing their method to thorns and pinpricks, which

irritate the exterior without having any vital effect. 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 reveling 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 in this pure play of the intellect led them to pounce with avidity upon the abundant stock of fallacies current among the Greeks of their time. These seem, most of them, to have been invented by the Magyrians, and and especially by eubilities of Miletus, a disciple of Euclides, but they became associated with the Stoics, both by friends and foes, who either praised their subtlety, or deride their solemnity in dealing with them.

Chrysippus himself was not above propounding such sophisms as the following. Whoever divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated commits impiety. The Hierophant divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated. Therefore, the Hierophant commits impiety. Anything you say passes through your mouth. You say, a wagon. Therefore, 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 eubilities. 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? Chrysippus set this down as inexplicable. Nevertheless, he was far from declining to discuss it. For we find in the list of his works a treatise on the five books of 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 truth. Another against those who profess 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 premises false. It was well for poor Philetus of Koss 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 logic. Phylletus of cause am I. T'was the liar who made me die, and the bad knights caused thereby. Perhaps we owe him an apology for the translation. End of chapter three.

Chapter 4 of Stoicism by George Stock. This is a Libravox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Leon Meyer. Stoicism by George Stock. Chapter 4. Ethic We have already had to touch upon the psychology 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 principles. The passions, it will be observed, are conspicuous by their absence.

For the Stoic theory was that the passions were simply the intellect in a diseased state, owing to the perversions of falsehood. This is why the Stoics would not parley with passion, conceiving that, if once it were led into the citadel of the soul, it would supplant the rightful ruler. Passion and reason were not two things which could be kept separate, in which case it might be hoped that reason would control passion, but were two states of the same thing, a worse and a better. The unperturbed intellect was the legitimate monarch in the kingdom of

man. Hence the Stoics commonly spoke of it as the leading principle. This was the part of the soul which received fantasies, and it was also that in which impulses were generated, with which we have now more particularly to do. Impulse or appetition was the principle in the soul which impelled to action. In an unperverted state, it was directed only to things in accordance with nature. The negative form of this principle, or the avoidance of things as being contrary to nature, we shall call repulsion. Notwithstanding the sublime heights to which Stoic morality rose, it was professedly based on self-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 in its own constitution, which were conciliated to it by nature. 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 contributed to the vital harmony. These were called the first things in accordance with nature. Their opposites were all contrary to nature, such as sickness, weakness, mutilation. Under the first things in accordance with nature, came also the congenital advantages of soul, such as quickness of intelligence, natural ability, industry, application, memory, and the

like. It was a question whether pleasure was to be included among the number. Some members of the school evidently thought that it might be, but the orthodox opinion was that pleasure was a sort of aftergrowth, and that the direct pursuit of it was deleterious to the organism. The aftergrowth of virtue were joy, cheerfulness, and the like. These were the gambolings of the spirit, like the frolicsomeness of an animal in the full flesh of its vitality, or like the blooming of a plant. For one in 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 an impulse man's superadded reason, so that when he became conscious of himself as a rational being, it was in accordance with his nature to let all his impulses be shaped by this new and master hand. Virtue was, therefore, preeminently in accordance with nature. What then, we must now ask, is the relation of reason to impulse, as conceived by the Stoics. Is reason simply the guiding? in impulse the motive power? Seneca protest against this view, when impulse is identified with passion. One of his grounds for doing so is that reason would be put on a level with passion,

if the two were equally necessary for action. But the question is begged by the use of the word passion, which was defined by the Stoics as an excessive impulse. Is it possible, then, even on Stoic principles, for reason to work without something different from its sense, to help it? Or must we say that reason is itself a principle of action? Here Plutarch comes to our aid, who tells us on the authority of Chrysippus in his work on law, that impulse is the reason of man commanding him to act, and similarly that repulsion is prohibitive reason. This renders the stoic

position unmistakable, and we must 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 the perfected form of impulse. Whenever impulse is not identical with reason, at least in a rational being, it is not truly impulse, but passion. The Stoics, it will be observed, were evolutionists 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.

As there were four cardinal virtues, so there were four primary passions. These were delight, grief, desire, and fear. All of them were excited by the presence or the prospect of fancied good or ill. What prompted desire by its prospect, caused delight by its presence, and what prompted fear by its prospect caused grief by its presence. 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 better and grievous to them, and it was the business of philosophy to fight against them. Nor was this strife a hopeless one, since the passions were not grounded in nature what were due to false opinion.

They originated involuntary 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 formulated, it became necessary to justify the division by arranging the specific forms of feeling under these four heads. In this task, the Stoics displayed 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 ingenuity 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. These were not perturbations of the soul, but rather constancies. 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 in the presence of the true and only good. He would never indeed be agitated by desire, but still he would be animated by wish, 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. There was, therefore, something rational, corresponding 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 Zanthippi declared that he had always the same face, whether on leaving the house in the morning or on returning to it at night. As the motley crowd of passions followed the banners of their four leaders, so specific forms of feeling sanctioned by reason, were severally assigned to the three eupathies. Things were divided by Zeno into good, bad, and indifferent. To good belonged virtue,

and what partook of virtue, to bad vice, and what partook of vice. All other things were indifferent. To the third class, then, belong such things as life and death, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, strength and weakness, honor and dishonor, wealth and poverty, victory and defeat, nobility and baseness of birth. Good was defined as that which benefits. To confer benefit was no less essential to good than to impart warmth was to heat. 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.

The indifference of things other than virtue and vice was apparent from the definition of good, which made it essentially beneficial. Such things as health and wealth might be beneficial or not, according to circumstances. They were, therefore, no more good than bad. Again, nothing could be really good, of which the good or ill depended on the use made of it, but this was the case with things like health and wealth. 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, unuseful, and serviceable, and beautiful, and beneficial, and choiceworthy, and just.

These various predicates 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. The true and only good, then, was identical with what the Greeks called the beautiful, and what we call the right. To say that a thing was right, was to say that it was good, and conversely, to say that it was good was to say that it was right. This absolute identity between the good and right, and on the other hand between the bad and wrong, was the head and front of the Stoic ethics. The right contained in itself all that was necessary

for the happy life. The wrong was the only evil, and made men miserable, whether they knew it or not. As virtue was itself the end, it was, of course, choice-worthy in and for itself, apart from hope or fear with regard to its consequences. Moreover, 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 prolongation 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.

To say that the good of men lay in virtue was another way of saying that it lay in reason, since virtue was the perfection of reason. As reason was the only thing whereby nature had distinguished man from other creatures, to live the rational life was to follow nature. Nature was at once the law of God and the law for man. For by the nature of anything was meant, not that which we actually find it to be, but that which in the eternal fitness of things it was obviously intended to become.

To be happy then was to be virtuous. To be virtuous was to be rational. To be rational was to follow nature. And to follow nature was to obey God. Virtue imparted to life that even flow in which Zeno declared happiness to consist. This was attained when one's own genius was in harmony with the will that disposed all things. Virtue, having been purified from all the dross of the emotions, came out as something purely intellectual, so that the Stoics agreed with the Socratic conception that virtue is knowledge. They also took on from Plato the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice, and define them as so many branches of knowledge.

Against these were set four cardinal vices of folly, intemperance, cowardice, and injustice. Under both the virtues and vices, there was an elaborate classification of specific qualities. But notwithstanding the care with which the Stoics divided and subdivided the virtues, virtue, according to their doctrine, was all the time one and indivisible. For virtue was simply reason, and reason, if it were there, must control every department of conduct alike. He who has one virtue has all.

was a paradox with which Greek thought was already familiar. But Chrysippus went beyond this, declaring that he who displayed one virtue did thereby display all. Neither was the man perfect, who did not possess all the virtues, nor was the act perfect which did not involve them all. Where the virtues differed from one another was merely in the order in which they put things. Each was primarily itself, secondarily all the virtues.

rest. Wisdom had to determine what it was right to do, but this involved the other virtues. Temperance had to impart stability to the impulses, but how could the term temperate be applied to a man who deserted his post through cowardice, or who failed to return a deposit through avarice, which is a form of injustice, or yet to one who misconducted affairs through rashness, which falls under folly. Courage had to face dangers and difficulties, but it was not courage unless its cause were just. Indeed, one of the ways in which courage was defined was as virtue fighting on behalf of justice. Similarly, justice put first the assigning to each man his due, but in the act of doing so had to bring in the other virtues. In short,

it was the business of the man of virtue to know and to do what ought to be done. For what ought to be done implied wisdom and choice, courage and endurance, justice and assignment, and temperance, and abiding by one's conviction. One virtue never acted by itself, but always on the advice of a committee. The obverse to this paradox, he who has one vice has all vices, was a conclusion which the Stoics did not shrink from drawing. One might lose part of one's Corinthian wear, and still retain the rest, but to lose one virtue, if virtue could be lost, would be to lose all along with it. We have now encountered the first paradox of stoicism, and can discern its origin in the

identification of virtue with pure reason. In setting forth the novelties in Zeno's teaching, Cicero mentions that, while his predecessors had recognized virtues due to nature and habit, he made all dependent upon reason. A natural consequence of this was, the reassertion of the position which Plato held, or wished to hold, namely that virtue can be taught. But the part played by nature and 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 knowledge, 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 endurance and harmonious distributions. 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. From things good and bad, we now turn to things indifferent. hitherto the stoic doctrine has been stern and uncompromising we have now to look at it under a different aspect and to see how it tried to conciliate common sense by things indifferent were meant such as did not necessarily contribute to virtue for instance health wealth strength and honor it is possible to have all these and not be virtuous it is possible also to be virtuous without them But we have now to learn that, though these things are neither good nor evil, and are therefore not matter for choice or avoidance, they are far from being indifferent in the sense of arousing

neither impulse nor repulsion. There are things indeed that are indifferent in the latter sense, such as whether you put out your finger this way or that, whether you stoop to pick up a straw or not, whether the number of hairs on your head be odd or even, but things of this sort of the number of hair. sort are exceptional. The bulk of things other than virtue and vice do arouse in us either impulse or repulsion. Let it be understood, then, that there are two senses of the word indifferent. One, neither good nor bad, two, neither a waking impulse nor repulsion. 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 soundness of the senses were in accordance with nature. 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. In the highest sense, indeed, of the term value, namely that of absolute value or worth, things indifferent did not possess any value at all. But still there might be

assigned to them what Antipater expressed by the term a selective value, or what he expressed by its barbarous privative a disselective disvalue. If a thing possessed a selective value, you took that thing rather than its contrary, supposing that circumstances allowed. For instance, health rather than sickness, wealth rather than poverty, life rather than death. Hence such things were called takeable, and their contraries untakeable. Things that possessed a high degree of value were called preferred, Those that possessed a high degree of disvalue were called rejected.

Such as possessed no considerable degree of either were neither preferred nor rejected. Zeno, with whom these names originated, justified their use about things really indifferent, on the ground that, at court, preferment could not be bestowed upon the king himself, but only on his ministers. Things preferred and rejected might belong to mind, body or a state. Among things preferred in the case of 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. 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 entrance, under the name of things indifferent. We must now see how they had, as it were, two moral codes, one for the sage and the other for the world in general.

The sage alone could act rightly, but other people might perform the proprieties. Anyone might honor as parents, but the sage alone did it as the outcome of wisdom, because he alone possessed the art of life, the peculiar work of which was to do everything that was done as the result of the best disposition. All the acts of the sage were were perfect proprieties, which were called rightnesses. All acts of all other men were sins or wrongnesses. At their best, they could only be intermediate proprieties.

The term propriety, then, is a generic one. But as often happens, the generic term got determined in use to a specific meaning, so that intermediate acts are commonly spoken of as proprieties in opposition to rightnesses. Instances of rightnesses are displaying wisdom and dealing justly. Instances of proprieties or intermediate acts are marrying, going on an embassy, and dialectic. The word duty is often employed to translate the Greek term which we are rendering by propriety. Any translation is no more than a choice of evils, since we have no real equivalent for the term. It was applicable not merely to human conduct, but also to the actions of the lower animals,

and even to the growth of plants. Now, apart from a craze for generalization, we should hardly think of the stern daughter of the voice of God, in connection with an amoeba corresponding successfully to stimulus. Yet the creature in its incontoration, Coate Way is exhibiting a dim analogy to duty. The term in question was first used by Zeno, and was explained by him, in accordance with its etymology, to mean what it came to one to do, so that, as far as this goes, becomingness would be the most appropriate translation. The sphere of propriety was confined to things indifferent, 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 things in accordance with nature. It might thus be a propriety for the sage, in spite of his happiness, 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. Since men in general were very far from being sages, it is evident that, if the stoic morality were to affect the world at large, it had to be accommodated in some way to existing circumstances.

No moral treatise perhaps has exercised so widespread in influence as that which was known to our forefathers under the title of Tully's offices. Now that work is founded on Penetius, a rather unorthodox Stoic, and it does not profess to treat of the ideal morality at all, but only of the intermediate proprieties. We may notice also that in that work the attempt to regard virtue as one and indivisible, is frankly abandoned, as being unsuitable to the popular intelligence. We pass on now to another instance of accommodation. According to the high-stoic doctrine, there was no mean between virtue and vice. All men, indeed, received from nature the starting points for virtue, but until perfection had been attained, they rested under the condemnation of vice.

It was, to employ an illustration of the poet-philosopher Clanthes, as though nature had begun an iambic line, and left men to finish it. Until that was done, they were to wear the fool's cap. The peripatetics, on the other hand, recognized an intermediate state between virtue and vice, to which they gave the name of progress, or proficients. Yet so entirely had the Stoics, for practical purposes, to accept this lowerly 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. The sage is like a man in the enjoyment

of perfect health, but the proficient is like a man recovering from a severe illness, with whom an abatement of the paroxysm is equivalent to health, and who is always in danger of a relapse. It is the business of philosophy to provide for the needs of these weaker brethren. The proficient is still called a fool, but it is pointed out that he is a very different kind of fool from the rest. Further, proficients are arranged into three classes, in a way that reminds one of the technicalities of Calvinistic theology. First of all, there are those who are near wisdom, but, however near they may be to the door of heaven, they are still, on the wrong side of it.

According to some doctors, these were already safe from backsliding, differing from the sage only in not having yet realized that they had attained to knowledge. Other authorities, however, refused to admit this, and regarded the first class as being exempt only from settled diseases of the soul, but not from passing attacks of passion. Thus did the Stoics differ among themselves as to the doctrine of final assurance. The second class consisted of those who had laid aside the worst diseases and passions of the soul, but might at any moment relapse into them. The third class was of those who had escaped one mental malady, but not another, who had conquered lust, let us say, but not ambition,

who disregarded death, but dreaded pain. This third class, adds Seneca, is by no means to be despised. Epictetus devotes a dissertation 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 dumbbells. And so, in morality, it is not the books a man has read, but how he is 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 rigor. 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 too surprising that the offshoots should be so too. To say that virtue is the highest good is a proposition to which everyone who aspires to the spiritual life must yield assent with his lips, even if he is not yet learned to believe it in his heart. But alter it into virtue is the only good, and by that slight change, it becomes at once the teeming 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 defense 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 offense how far you go. trespassing at all is forbidden. This doctrine was defended by the Stoics on account of its bracing moral effect, as showing the heinousness of sin. Horace gives the judgment of the world in saying that common sense and morality to say nothing

of utility revolt against it. Here are some other specimens of the Stoic paradoxes. Every fool is mad. Only the sage is free, and every single. 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 state from cannabis is as much as much as much as,

not in cannabis as the man who is a hundred states 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 you're full 500 fathom down. Insofar 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, 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 sun, 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 Follaris, would exclaim,

How delightful! How little I mind this! 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. They insisted on affecting here and now that separation between the sheep and the goats, which Christ postponed to the day of judgment. Unfortunately, when it came to practice, all were found to be goats, so that the division was a merely formal one. It approves itself, says Stubias,

quote, 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 themselves of the arts of life and their conduct, they do all things well, 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 the objects which they set on before themselves, 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 anyone, nor does he compel another, he is neither hindered, nor does he hinder, he is neither forced by anyone, nor does he himself force any man. He neither does ill, nor is himself done ill to, nor fall. He is not falls into ill, nor is deceived, nor deceives another, nor is he mistaken or ignorant, nor does he forget, nor entertain 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 statesman, and versed in the arts of managing a household 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, 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. religion. Another appellation which the Stoics had for the sage was the urbane man, while the fool in contradistinction was called a boor. Boorishness was defined as an experience of the customs and laws of the state. By the state was meant not Athens or Sparta, as would have been the case in a former age, but the society of all rational beings, into which the Stoics spiritualized the state. The sage alone had the freedom of the city, and the fool was therefore not only a boor,

but an alien or an exile. In this city, justice was natural and not conventional, for the law by which it was governed was the law of right reason. The law then was spiritualized by the Stoics just as the state was. It no longer meant the enactments of this or that community, but the mandates of the eternal reason which ruled the world, and which would prevail in the ideal state. Law was defined as right reason commanding what was to be done, and forbidding what was not to be done. As such, it in no way differed from the impulse of the sage himself. As a member of a state, and by nature subject to law, man was essentially a social being. Between all the wives there existed unanimity, which was a knowledge of the common good, 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 his part in public life. Theoretically, this was always true, and practically he would do so, wherever the actual constitution made any tolerable approach to the ideal type. But if the circumstances were such as to make it certain that his embarking on politics would be of no service to his country, and only a source of danger to himself, then he would refrain. The kind of constitution, of which the Stoics most approved, was a mixed government,

containing democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical elements. Where circumstances allowed, the sage would act as led to the state would act as led to 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 wives would have women and children in common. when the elders would love all the rising generation equally with parental fondness,

and when marital jealousy would be no more. As being essentially a social being, the sage was endowed not only with the graver political virtues, but also with the graces of life. He was sociable, tactful, and stimulating, using conversation as a means for promoting goodwill and friendship. So far as might be, he was all things to all men, which made him. 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 unostentatious, and simple and

unaffected. In particular, he never delighted in irony, much less in sarcasm. From the social characteristics of the sage, we turn now to a side of his character, which appears eminently antisocial. One of his most highly vaunted character, one of his most highly vaunted characteristics was his self-suffishingness. He was to be able to step out of a burning city coming from the wreck not only of his fortunes, but of his friends and family, and to declare with a smile that he had lost nothing. All that he truly cared for was to be centered in himself, only thus could he be sure that fortune would not rest it from him. The apathy or passionlessness of the sage is a nuchy.

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. There were so many disturbances of the even flow in which his bliss lay. The sage, therefore, would never be moved by a feeling of favor towards anyone. 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 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 is apt to raise a prejudice 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 at first presents itself one was the ideal conception which the stoic 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. It was 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. 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 wonder. No miracle of nature could excite his astonishment, no mephitic caverns which men deem the mouths of hell, no deep-drawn eb-tides, the standing marvel of the Mediterranean dwellers, no hot springs, no spouting jets of fire. From the absence of passion it is but a step 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. The sage it was maintained, held no opinions,

He never repented of his conduct. He was never deceived in anything. Between the daylight of knowledge and the darkness of Nessence, 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 sympathized, Quote, his understanding is always at its meridian. You never see the first dawn, the early streaks. He is no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo-conceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Unquote.

Opinion, whether it is not. the form of an ungripped assent, or of a weak supposition, was alien from the mental disposition of the serious man. With him there was no hasty or premature assent of the understanding, no forgetfulness, no distrust. He never allowed himself to be overreached or diluted, never had need of an arbiter, never was out in his reckoning, nor put out by another. No urbane man ever wandered from his way, or missed his mark, or saw wrong, 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 descent, and the other a sign of previous precipitancy.

There was with him no change, no retraction, and no tripping. These things were for those whose dogmas could alter. 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. He would not, however, altogether eschew banquets. Indeed, the Stoics recognized a virtue under the name of conviviality, which consisted in the proper conduct of them. It was said of Chrysippus that his demeanor was always quiet, even if his gait were unsteady, so that his housekeeper declared that only his legs were drunk. there were pleasantries even within the school on this subject of the infallibility of the sage aresto of chaos while seceding on some other matters held fast to the dogma that the sage never opined

whereupon perseus played a trick upon him he made one of the two twin brothers deposit a sum of money with him and the other called to reclaim it the success of the trick however only went to establish that aresto 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, for the Stoics believed, with Socrates, that it was not permissive,

by the divine law, for a better man to be harmed by a worse. You could not harm the sage any more than you can harm the sunlight. He was in our world, but not of it. There was no possibility of evil for him, save in his own will, and that you could not touch. And as the sage was beyond harm, so also was he above insult. Men might disgrace themselves by their insolent attitude towards his mild majesty, but it was not in their power to disgrace him. As the Stoics had their analog 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. 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 philosophy. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Stoicism by George Stock. This is a Libravox recording.

All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Leon Meyer. Stoicism by George Stock. Chapter 5. Physics 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's.

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. 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 principle alone was cause. The other was mere material for it to work on, inert, senseless, destitute in itself of all shape and qualities, but ready to assume

inequalities or shape. Matter was defined as that out of which anything is produced. 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. The Stoics, it will be observed, use 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 understood, were conceived of as bodies, though without form, the one everywhere interpenetrating the other. 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 conceived 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 and motion. Now the active principle was not air, but it was something which bore an analogy to it, namely ether. 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 ungenerated and indestructible, must be distinguished 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 Sympedocles, 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. An element was defined as that out of which things at first come into being, and into which they are at last resolved. In this relation did the

four elements stand to all the compound bodies which the universe contained. The terms earth, air, fire and water, had to be taken in a wide sense. Earth, meaning all that was of the nature of earth, air, all that was of the nature of air, and so on. Thus, in the human frame, the bones and sinews pertained to Earth. 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 dryness. Between them, the four elements made up the unqualified being called matter. 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. 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 tins away from its own center. By heavy, that which tends toward it. The two light elements stood to the two heavy ones in much the same relation as the active to the passive principle generally. But further, fire had such a primacy as entitled it, if the definition of element were pressed, to be considered alone worthy of the name. For the three other elements arose out of it, and were to be again resolved into it.

We should obtain a wholly wrong impression of what Bishop Barclay calls the philosophy of fire if we said before our minds in this connection the raging element, whose strength is in destruction. 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 in which he called artistic this latter kind of fire which was known as ether was the substance of the heavenly bodies as it was also of the soul of animals and of the and of the nature of plants. Chrysippus, following Heraclitus, taught that the elements passed into one another by a process of condensation and rarifaction.

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. It is allowable to see in this old,

world doctrine, and anticipation of the modern idea of different states of matter, the solid, the liquid in 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. But, and the first of the fixed stars. 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 center, whereas earth had prominences which rose above water. Extension was essential to body, though shape was not. A body was that which has extension in three dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness. This was called also a solid body. The boundary of such a body was a surface, which was that which possesses length and breadth only, but not depth. The boundary of a surface was a line which was length without breadth, as in Euclid, or that which has length only. Lastly, the boundary of a line was a point, which was declared to be the smallest sign. This definition is suggestive of the minima visibilia or colored 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 Euclids, in telling us something positive about a point. The conception of a point as position without magnitude, which was current before the time of Euclid, BC323 to 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, but outside of this lay the infinite void, without beginning, middle, or end. This occupied a very ambiguous position in their scheme. It was not being, for being was confined to body, and yet it was there. It was, in fact, nothing, and that was why it was infinite, for as nothing cannot be abound to anything, so neither can there be any bound to nothing. But while bodyless 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 one, the cosmos only, two, cosmos plus void. If then by the term universe we understand the cosmos or ordered whole, we must say that the Stoics regarded the universe as finite. All being and all

body, which was the same thing with body, had necessarily bounds. It was only not being which was boundless. Another distinction, due this time to Chrysippus himself, which the Stoics found it convenient to draw was between the three words void, place, and space. Void was defined 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. As there was no center of the cosmos unfilled by body, space it will be seen was another name for the all.

Place was compared to a vessel that was full, void to one. that was empty, and space to the vast wine cask, 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 and an ocean of void, they did not admit the possibility that other such island. might exist beyond our kin. 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, as staunchly as the Mohammedans for the unity of God, for with them the cosmos was God. they conceived of it as spherical, on the ground that the sphere was the perfect figure, and was also the best adapted for motion. Not that the universe as a whole moved, the earth lay at its center, spherical and motionless, and round it coursed the sun, moon, and planets, fixed each in its several sphere, as in so many

concentric 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 center kept the earth fixed in the middle, as being subject to an equal pressure on every side. The same cause also, according to Zeno, kept the universe itself at rest in the void. But in an infinite void, it could make no difference whether the hole were at rest or in motion. It may have been a desire to escape the notion of a migratory hole, 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 center, 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 neutralize one another, and so leave the universe devoid of weight. The beauty of the universe was a topic on which the Stoics delighted to descant.

This was manifest from its form, its color, its size, and its embroidered vesture of stars. Its form was that of a sphere, which was as perfect among solid as the circle among plain figures, and for the same reason, namely that every point on the circumference was equidistant from the center. its color 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 through such a vast interjacent tract of air in size which is an essential element of beauty it was of course beyond compare and then there was the glory of the star-eyed flash of heaven times fair embroidery work of cunning hand The universe was the only thing which was perfect in itself, the one thing which was an end in itself. All other things were perfect indeed as parts, when considered with reference to the whole, but were none of them ends in themselves, unless man could be deemed so,

who was born to contemplate the universe and imitate its perfections. Thus then did the Stoics envisage the universe on its physical side, as one, finite, fixed in space, but revolving round its own center, earth, beautiful beyond all things, and perfect as a whole. But it was impossible for this order and beauty to exist without mind. The universe was pervaded by intelligence, as man's body is pervaded by his soul. But as the human soul, though everywhere present in the body, is not present everywhere in the same degree, so it was with the world soul. The human soul presents itself not only as intellect, but also in the lower manifestations of sense, growth, and cohesion. It is the soul, which is the cause of the plant life,

which displays itself more particularly in the nails and hair. It is the soul also, which causes cohesion among the parts of the solid substances, such as bones and sinews, that make up our frame. In the same way the world's 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. To this lowest stage add change, and you have growth or plant nature. Super add to this fantasy and impulse, and you rise to the soul of irrational animals. At a yet higher stage, you reach the rational and discursive intellect. which is peculiar to man among mortal natures. We have spoken of soul as the cause of the plant life in our bodies, but plants were not admitted by the Stoics to be possessed of soul in the strict sense.

What animated them was nature, or as we have called it above, growth. Nature, in this sense of the principle of growth, was defined by the Stoics as a constructive fire, proceeding in a regular way to production, or a fiery spirit endowed with artistic skill. That nature was an artist needed no proof, since it was her handiwork that human art essayed to copy. But she was an artist who combined the useful with the pleasant, aiming at once at beauty and convenience. In the widest sense, nature was another name for Providence, or the principle which held the universe together.

But as the term is now being employed, it stood for that. that degree of existence, which is above cohesion and below soul. From this point of view, it was defined as, quote, a cohesion, subject to self-originated change in accordance with seminal reasons, affecting and maintaining its results in definite times, and reproducing in the offspring the characteristics of the parent, unquote. This sounds about as abstract as Herbert Spencer's definition of life, but it must be born in mind that nature was all the time a spirit, and as such a body. It was the body of a less subtle essence than soul. Similarly, when the Stoic spoke of cohesion, they are not to be taken as referring

to some abstract principle like attraction. Cohesions, said Chrysippus, quote, are nothing else than heirs, 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, unquote. Not only solidity then, but also colors, which Zeno called the first schemotism of matter, were regarded as due to the mysterious agency of air. In fact, qualities in general were but blasts and tensions of the air, which gave form and figure to the inert matter underlying them. As the man is, in one sense, the soul, in another the body, and in a third the union of both,

so it was with the cosmos. The word was used in three senses. One, God, two, the arrangement of the stars, etc. Three, the combination of both. The cosmos, as identical with God, was described as, an individual made up of all being, who is incorruptible and ungenerated, the fashioner of the ordered frame of the universe, who at certain periods of time absorbs all being into himself, and again generates it from himself. 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. 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. In the efflagration, when everything went back to the primeval ether, 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 affligration. 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 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 maws 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. 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 thought. thoughts, or, as the Stoics sometimes put it, Zeus would fall back upon Providence. For by Providence, they meant the leading principle or mind of the whole, and by Zeus, as distinguished from Providence, this mind together with the cosmos, which was to it as body. In the afflagration, the two would be fused into one in the single substance of ether, and then in the fullness of time there would be a restitution of all things. Everything would come round again, exactly as it had been before. Altar Eret tuum tefus, and altera cuai vehat argo delectos heroas.

Eilunt eitium altaira bella. At ceiterum at Troiam Magnus mitethur Achilles. To us, who have been taught the pant for progress, this seems a dreary prospect, but the Stoics were consistent optimists and did not ask for a change in what was best. They were content that the one drama of existence should enjoy a perpetual run without perhaps too nice a consideration for the actors. Death intermitted life, but did not end it, for the candle of life, which was extinguished now, would be kindled again hereafter.

Being and not being came round in endless succession for all save him, into whom all being was resolved, and out of whom it emerged again, as from the vortex of some Eonian maelstrom. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Stoicism This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Recording by Leon Meyer Stoicism by George Stom Chapter 6. Conclusion. When Socrates declared before his judges that, There was no evil to a good man either in life or after death, nor are his affairs neglected by the gods. He sounded the keynote of Stoicism, with its two main doctrines of virtue as the only good, and the government of the world by Providence. Let us weigh his words, lest we interpret 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 ever 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 to have meant that there was 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 themselves, but he cannot be expected to look after their luggage. They relieve him of that care by being indifferent about it. 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, expressed 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 Onitas 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 Apictetus as one of the watchwords of Stoicism. There is nothing more than distinctive of Socrates, than the doctrine that virtue is knowledge. Here, too, the Stoics followed him, ignoring all that Aristotle had done in showing the part played by the emotions and the will and virtue. Reason was with them a principle of action. With Aristotle, it was a principle that guided action, but the mode of power had to come from elsewhere. Socrates must even be held responsible for the Stoic paradox of the madness of all ordinary folk. The Stoics did not owe much to the peripatetics. There was too much balance about the mastermind of Aristotle for their narrow intensity. His recognition of the value of the passions was to them an advocacy of disease in moderation. His admission of other elements besides virtue into the conception of happiness seemed to them to be a betrayal of the citadel.

To say, as he did, that the exercise of virtue was the highest good, was no man. in their eyes, unless they were added to the confession that there was none beside it. The Stoics tried to treat man as a being of pure reason. The peripatatics would not shut their eyes to his mixed nature, and contended that the good of such a being must also be mixed, containing in it elements which had reference to the body and its environment. The goods of the soul, indeed, they said, far outweighed those of body and estate, but still the latter had a right to be considered. That virtue is the one thing needful would have been acknowledged by the parapetetics as well as by the Stoics, but in a different sense. The parapatetics would have

meant by it that such things as health and wealth and honor and family and friends and country, though good in their way, were not yet to be compared with goods of the soul, whereas the Stoics meant literally that there were no other goods. In practice, the two doctrines were, 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 parabetetics 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 peripatetics 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 conception. It is like the image seen by Nebuchadnezzar 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 heal. 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, and they said to virtue, as Augustine said to God, our heart can find no rest until it rest in thee.

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 recognized this in postponing 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 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,

and if indifferent than despicable, so that they needed not to work. worry about them. They had but to keep a conscience void of offense, and let other things look after themselves. 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 forthcoming, to avail themselves of the open door. How long virtue lasted, they declared, was beside the point, it was the state of mine that counted. The sage would deem that time pertained not to him.

Thus were the Stoics ready to serve God for not, 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 indifferent. The true Stoic, having chosen the better part, was content to be still and murmur not.

There might be a future life, the Stoics believe 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. Virtutum vidaean't in Tabaskanke relicta. 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 superiority of justice to injustice. But Chrysippus protested against Plato's procedure on this point, declaring that the talk about punishment by the gods was mere bugaboo. 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. 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 appearance 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. Far more important than what others think of you is what you have reason to think of yourself. The same searching spirit is displayed in the Stoic declaration that, to be in lust is sin even without the act.

He who apprehends the force of such philosophy may well apostrophize it in the words of Cicero. One day well spent, and in accordance with thy precepts, is worth an immortality of sin. 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 claims on our admiration. They were the first fully to recognize the worth of man as man.

They heralded the reign of peace, 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. The word philanthropy, though not unheard before their time, 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 reserve 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 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 a friendship, but unfortunately it is not this concession which is dominant in his system, but rather the reduction of a slave to a living tool by which it is immediately preceded. In another passage Aristotle 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 traveling. This insipient humanitarianism seems to have been developed in a much more marked way

by Aristotle's followers, 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, or which was the same thing, to serve God. And that could be done in any station in life. The sole condition of communion with gods and good men was the possession 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. Birth is of no importance. All are sprung from the gods. Quote, 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."

Unquote. Wherever there was a human being, their Stoicism saw a field for well-doing. Its followers were always to have in their mouths and hearts the well-known line, Homo sum, Humana nihil, Amay Alienum Puto. Closely connected with the humanitarianism of the Greeks, is their cosmopolitanism? Cosmopolitanism is a word which is contracted rather than expanded in meaning with the advance of time. We mean by it freedom from the shackles of nationality. The Stoics meant this and more. The city of which they claim 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. To be exiled from one of them was only like changing your lodgings, 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 and his republic, and after him by Chrysippus and his followers. It caught the imagination of alien writers, as of the author of the peripatetic de Mundo, who was possibly of Jewish origin, and of Philo and St. Paul, who were certainly so. Cicero does not fail to make use of it on behalf of the Stoics.

Seneca revels in it, Epictetus employs it for edification, and Marcus Aurelius find 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. 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 connection is obvious. On a wide view of the matter, we may say that the opening of the east, 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. End of Chapter 6. This concludes the reading of Stoicism by George Stock.