A GUIDE TO STOICISM

by St. George Stock

TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 347

Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius. 

FOREWORD

If you strip Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful misuse oflanguage, what is left is simply the moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, dashed with the physics of Heraclitus. Stoicismwas not so much a new doctrine as the form under which the old Greekphilosophy finally presented itself to the world at large. It owedits popularity in some measure to its extravagance. A great dealmight be said about Stoicism as a religion and about the part itplayed in the formation of Christianity but these subjects wereexcluded by the plan of this volume which was to present a sketch ofthe Stoic doctrine based on the original authorities. 

 ST GEORGE STOCK M A _Pemb. Coll. Oxford_

 A GUIDE TO STOICISM. 

 ST GEORGE STOCK

PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 

Among the Greeks and Romans of the classical age philosophy occupiedthe place taken by religion among ourselves. Their appeal was toreason not to revelation. To what, asks Cicero in his Offices, are weto look for training in virtue, if not to philosophy? Now, if truthis believed to rest upon authority it is natural that it should beimpressed upon the mind from the earliest age, since the essentialthing is that it should be believed, but a truth which makes itsappeal to reason must be content to wait till reason is developed. Weare born into the Eastern, Western or Anglican communion or someother denomination, but it was of his own free choice that theserious minded young Greek or Roman embraced the tenets of one of thegreat sects which divided the world of philosophy. The motive whichled him to do so in the first instance may have been merely theinfluence of a friend or a discourse from some eloquent speaker, butthe choice once made was his own choice, and he adhered to it assuch. Conversions from one sect to another were of quite rareoccurrence. A certain Dionysius of Heraclea, who went over from theStoics to the Cyrenaics, was ever afterward known as "the deserter. "It was as difficult to be independent in philosophy as it is with usto be independent in politics. When a young man joined a school, hecommitted himself to all its opinions, not only as to the end oflife, which was the main point of division, but as to all questionson all subjects. The Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics fromthe Epicurean; he differed also in his theology and his physics andhis metaphysics. Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought young men"unfit to hear moral philosophy". And yet it was a question--orrather the question--of moral philosophy, the answer to which decidedthe young man's opinions on all other points. The language whichCicero sometimes uses about the seriousness of the choice made inearly life and how a young man gets entrammelled by a school beforehe is really able to judge, reminds us of what we hear said nowadaysabout the danger of a young man's taking orders before his opinionsare formed. To this it was replied that a young man only exercisedthe right of private judgment in selecting the authority whom heshould follow, and, having once done that, trusted to him for all therest. With the analogue of this contention also we are familiar inmodern times. Cicero allows that there would be something in it, ifthe selection of the true philosopher did not above all thingsrequire the philosophic mind. But in those days it was probably thecase, as it is now, that, if a man did not form speculative opinionsin youth, the pressure of affairs would not leave him leisure to doso later. 

The life span of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was from B. C. 347 to275. He did not begin teaching till 315, at the mature age of forty. Aristotle had passed away in 322, and with him closed the greatconstructive era of Greek thought. The Ionian philosophers hadspeculated on the physical constitution of the universe, thePythagoreans on the mystical properties of numbers; Heraclitus hadpropounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Leucippus hadstruck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raisedquestions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all thefreedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically workedthem out. The later schools did not add much to the body ofphilosophy. What they did was to emphasize different sides of thedoctrine of their predecessors and to drive views to their logicalconsequences. The great lesson of Greek philosophy is that it isworth while to do right irrespective of reward and punishment andregardless of the shortness of life. This lesson the Stoics soenforced by the earnestness of their lives and the influence of theirmoral teaching that it has become associated more particularly withthem. Cicero, though he always classed himself as an Academic, exclaims in one place that he is afraid the Stoics are the onlyphilosophers, and whenever he is combating Epicureanism his languageis that of a Stoic. Some of Vergil's most eloquent passages seem tobe inspired by Stoic speculation. Even Horace, despite his banterabout the sage, in his serious moods borrows the language of theStoics. It was they who inspired the highest flights of declamatoryeloquence in Persius and Juvenal. Their moral philosophy affected theworld through Roman law, the great masters of which were brought upunder its influence. So all pervasive indeed was this moralphilosophy of the Stoics that it was read by the Jews of Alexandriainto Moses under the veil of allegory and was declared to be theinner meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Stoics then did notadd much to the body of Philosophy, they did a great work inpopularising 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. Bothregarded philosophy as 'the art of life, ' though they differed intheir conception of what that art should be. Widely as the twoschools were opposed to one another, they had also other features incommon. Both were children of an age in which the free city had givenway to monarchies, and personal had taken the place of corporatelife. The question of happiness is no longer, as with Aristotle, andstill more with Plato, one for the state, but for the individual. Inboth schools the speculative interest was feeble from the first, andtended to become feebler as time went on. Both were new departuresfrom pre-existent schools. Stoicism was bred out of Cynicism, asEpicureanism out of Cyrenaicism. Both were content to fall back fortheir physics upon the pre-Socratic schools, the one adopting thefirm philosophy of Heraclitus, the other the atomic theory ofDemocritus. Both were in strong reaction against the abstractions ofPlato and Aristotle, and would tolerate nothing but concrete reality. The Stoics were quite as materialistic in their own way as theEpicureans. With regard indeed to the nature of the highest god wemay, with Senaca represent the difference between the two schools asa question of the senses against the intellect, but we shall seepresently that the Stoics regarded the intellect itself as being akind of body. 

The Greeks were all agreed that there was an end or aim of life, andthat it was to be called 'happiness, ' but at that point theiragreement ended. As to the nature of happiness there was the utmostvariety of opinion. Democritus had made it consist in mentalserenity, Anaxagoras in speculation, Socrates in wisdom, Aristotle inthe practise of virtue with some amount of favour from fortune, Aristippus simply in pleasure. These were opinions of thephilosophers. But, besides these, there were the opinions of ordinarymen, as shown by their lives rather than by their language. Zeno'scontribution to thought on the subject does not at first sight appearilluminating. He said that the end was 'to live consistently, ' theimplication doubtless being that no life but the passionless life ofreason could ultimately be consistent with itself. Cleanthes, hisimmediate successor in the school, is credited with having added thewords 'with nature, ' thus completing the well-known Stoic formulathat the end is 'to live consistently with nature. '

It was assumed by the Greeks that the ways of nature were 'the waysof pleasantness, ' and that 'all her paths' were 'peace. ' This mayseem to us a startling assumption, but that is because we do not meanby 'nature' the same thing as they did. We connect the term with theorigin of a thing, they connected it rather with the end; by the'natural state' we mean a state of savagery, they meant the highestcivilization; we mean by a thing's nature what it is or has been, they meant what it ought to become under the most favourableconditions; not the sour crab, but the mellow glory of the Hesperidesworthy to be guarded by a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks thenatural apple. Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that the State isa natural product, because it is evolved out of social relationswhich exist by nature. Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous term tothe Greeks no less than to ourselves, but in the sense with which weare now concerned, the nature of anything was defined by thePeripatetics as 'the end of its becoming. ' Another definition oftheirs puts the matter still more clearly. 'What each thing is whenits growth has been completed, that we declare to be the nature ofeach thing'. 

Following out this conception the Stoics identified a life inaccordance with nature with a life in accordance with the highestperfection to which man could attain. Now, as man was essentially arational animal, his work as man lay in living the rational life. Andthe perfection of reason was virtue. Hence the ways of nature were noother than the ways of virtue. And so it came about that the Stoicformula might be expressed in a number of different ways which yetall amounted to the same thing. The end was to live the virtuouslife, or to live consistently, or to live in accordance with nature, or to live rationally. 

DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Philosophy was defined by the Stoics as 'the knowledge of thingsdivine and human'. It was divided into three departments; logic, ethic, and physic. This division indeed was in existence before theirtime, but they have got the credit of it as of some other thingswhich they did not originate. Neither was it confined to them, butwas part of the common stock of thought. Even the Epicureans, who aresaid to have rejected logic can hardly be counted as dissentientsfrom this threefold division. For what they did was to substitute forthe Stoic logic a logic of their own, dealing with the notionsderived from sense, much in the same way as Bacon substituted hisNovum Organum for the Organon of Aristotle. Cleanthes we are toldrecognised six parts of philosophy, namely, dialectic, rhetoric, ethic, politic, physic, and theology, but these are obviously theresult of subdivision of the primary ones. Of the three departmentswe may say that logic deals with the form and expression ofknowledge, physic with the matter of knowledge, and ethic with theuse of knowledge. The division may also be justified in this way. Philosophy must study either nature (including the divine nature) orman; and, if it studies man, it must regard him either from the sideof 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 he studied, we have had preserved to us the actual words of Chrysippus in hisfourth book on Lives. 'First of all then it seems to me that, as hasbeen rightly said by the ancients, there are three heads under whichthe speculations of the philosopher fall, logic, ethic, physic; next, that of these the logical should come first, the ethical second, andthe physical third, and that of the physical the treatment of thegods should come last, whence also they have given the name of"completions" to the instruction delivered on this subject'. Thatthis order however might yield to convenience is plain from anotherbook on the use of reason, where he says that 'the student who takesup logic first need not entirely abstain from the other branches ofphilosophy, but should study them also as occasion offers. '

Plutarch twits Chrysippus with inconsistency, because in the face ofthis declaration as to the order of treatment, he nevertheless saysthat morals rest upon physics. But to this charge it may fairly bereplied that the order of exposition need not coincide with the orderof existence. Metaphysically speaking, morals may depend upon physicsand the right conduct of man be deducible from the structure of theuniverse but for all that, it may be advisable to study physicslater. Physics meant the nature of God and the Universe. Our naturemay be deducible from that but it is better known to ourselves tostart with, so that it may be well to begin from the end of the stickthat we have in our hands. But that Chrysippus did teach the logicaldependence of morals on physics is plain from his own words. In histhird book on the Gods he says 'for it is not possible to find anyother origin of justice or mode of its generation save that from Zeusand the nature of the universe for anything we have to say about goodand evil must needs derive its origin therefrom', and again in hisPhysical Theses, 'for there is no other or more appropriate way ofapproaching the subject of good and evil on the virtues or happinessthan from the nature of all things and the administration of theuniverse--for it is to these we must attach the treatment of good andevil inasmuch as there is no better origin to which we can refer themand inasmuch as physical speculation is taken in solely with a viewto the distinction between good and evil. '

The last words are worth noting as showing that even with Chrysippuswho has been called the intellectual founder of Stoicism the wholestress of the philosophy of the Porch fell upon its moral teaching. It was a favourite metaphor with the school to compare philosophy toa fertile vineyard or orchard. Ethic was the good fruit, physic thetall plants, and logic the strong wall. The wall existed only toguard the trees, and the trees only to produce the fruit. Or againphilosophy was likened to an egg of which ethic was the yolkcontaining the chick, physic the white which formed its nourishmentwhile logic was the hard outside shell. Posidonius, a later member ofthe school, objected to the metaphor from the vineyard on the groundthat the fruit and the trees and the wall were all separable whereasthe parts of philosophy were inseparable. He preferred therefore toliken it to a living organism, logic being the bones and sinews, physic the flesh and blood, but ethic the soul. 

LOGIC

The Stoics had a tremendous reputation for logic. In this departmentthey were the successors or rather the supersessors of Aristotle. Forafter the death of Theophrastus the library of the Lyceum is said tohave been buried underground at Scepsis until about a century beforeChrist, So that the Organon may actually have been lost to the worldduring that period. At all events under Strato the successor ofTheophrastus who specialized in natural science the school had lostits comprehensiveness. Cicero even finds it consonant with dramaticpropriety to make Cato charge the later Peripatetics with ignoranceof logic! On the other hand Chrysippus became so famous for his logicas to create a general impression that if there were a logic amongthe gods it would be no other than the Chrysippean. 

But if the Stoics were strong in logic they were weak in rhetoric. This strength and weakness were characteristic of the school at allperiods. Cato is the only Roman Stoic to whom Cicero accords thepraise of real eloquence. In the dying accents of the school as wehear them in Marcus Aurelius the imperial sage counts it a thing tobe thankful for that he had learnt to abstain from rhetoric, poetic, and elegance of diction. The reader however cannot help wishing thathe had taken some means to diminish the crabbedness of his style. Ifa lesson were wanted in the importance of sacrificing to the Gracesit might be found in the fact that the early Stoic writers despitetheir logical subtlety have all perished and that their remains haveto be sought for so largely in the pages of Cicero. In speaking oflogic as one of the three departments of philosophy we must bear inmind that the term was one of much wider meaning than it is with us. It included rhetoric, poetic, and grammar as well as dialectic orlogic proper, to say nothing of disquisitions on the senses and theintellect which we should now refer to psychology. 

Logic as a whole being divided into rhetoric and dialectic: rhetoricwas defined to be the knowledge of how to speak well in expositorydiscourses and dialectic as the knowledge of how to argue rightly inmatters of question and answer. Both rhetoric and dialectic werespoken of by the Stoics as virtues for they divided virtue in itsmost generic sense in the same way as they divided philosophy intophysical, ethical, and logical. Rhetoric and dialectic were thus thetwo species of logical virtue. Zeno expressed their difference bycomparing rhetoric to the palm and dialectic to the fist. 

Instead of throwing in poetic and grammar with rhetoric, the Stoicssubdivided dialectic into the part which dealt with the meaning andthe part which dealt with the sound, or as Chrysippus phrased it, concerning significants and significates. Under the former came thetreatment of the alphabet, of the parts of speech, of solecism, ofbarbarism, of poems, of amphibolies, of metre and music--a list whichseems at first sight a little mixed, but in which we can recognisethe general features of grammar, with its departments of phonology, accidence, and prosody. The treatment of solecism and barbarism ingrammar corresponded to that of fallacies in logic. With regard tothe alphabet it is worth noting that the Stoics recognised sevenvowels and six mutes. This is more correct than our way of talking ofnine mutes, since the aspirate consonants are plainly not mute. Therewere, 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' wasmeant speaking good Greek. 'Distinction' was defined to be 'a dictionwhich avoided homeliness. ' Over against these there were twocomprehensive vices, barbarism and solecism, the one being an offenceagainst accidence, the other against syntax. 

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 fromthe Stoics. The earliest characters inscribed upon it were theimpressions of sense, which the Greeks called "phantasies. " Aphantasy was defined by Zeno as "an impression in the soul. "Cleanthes was content to take this definition in its literal sense, and believe that the soul was impressed by external objects as wax bya signet ring. Chrysippus, however, found a difficulty here, andpreferred to interpret the Master's saying to mean an alteration orchange in the soul. He figured to himself the soul as receiving amodification from every external object which acts upon it just asthe air receives countless strokes when many people are speaking atonce. Further, he declared that in receiving an impression the soulwas purely passive and that the phantasy revealed not only its ownexistence, but that also of its cause, just as light displays itselfand the things that are in it. Thus, when through sight we receive animpression of white, an affection takes place in the soul, in virtuewhereof we are able to say that there exists a white object affectingus. The power to name the object resides in the understanding. Firstmust come the phantasy, and the understanding, having the power ofutterance, expresses in speech the affection it receives from theobject. The cause of the phantasy was called the "phantast, " _e. G. _ the white or cold object. If there is no external cause, thenthe supposed object of the impression was a "phantasm, " such as afigure in a dream, or the Furies whom Orestes sees in his frenzy. 

How then was the impression which had reality behind it to bedistinguished from that which had not? "By the feel" is all that theStoics really had to say in answer to this question. Just as Humemade the difference between sense-impressions and ideas to lie in thegreater vividness of the former, so did they; only Hume saw nonecessity to go beyond the impression, whereas the Stoics did. Certain impressions, they maintained, carried with them anirresistible conviction of their own reality, and this, not merely inthe sense that they existed; but also that they were referable to anexternal cause. These were called "gripping phantasies. " Such aphantasy did not need proof of its own existence, or of that of itsobject. It possessed self-evidence. Its occurrence was attended withyielding and assent on the part of the soul. For it is as natural forthe soul to assent to the self-evident as it is for it to pursue itsproper good. The assent to a griping phantasy was called"comprehension, " as indicating the firm hold that the soul thus tookof reality. A gripping phantasy was defined as one which was stampedand impressed from an existing object, in virtue of that objectitself, 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 thedefinition to provide against such a case as that of the mad Orestes, who takes his sister to be a Fury. There the impression was derivedfrom an existing object, but not from that object as such, but ascoloured by the imagination of the percipient. 

The criterion of truth then was no other than the gripping phantasy. Such at least was the doctrine of the earlier Stoics, but the lateradded a saving clause, "when there is no impediment. " For they werepressed by their opponents with such imaginary cases as that ofAdmetus, seeing his wife before him in very deed, and yet notbelieving it to be her. But here there was an impediment. Admetus didnot believe that the dead could rise. Again Menelaus did not believein the real Helen when he found her on the island of Pharos. But hereagain there was an impediment. For Menelaus could not have beenexpected to know that he had been for ten years fighting for aphantom. When, however, there was no such impediment, then they saidthe gripping phantasy did indeed deserve its name, for it almost tookmen by the hair of the head and dragged them to assent. 

So far we have used "phantasy" only of real or imaginary impressionsof sense. But the term was not thus restricted by the Stoics, whodivided phantasies into sensible and not sensible. The latter camethrough the understanding and were of bodiless things which couldonly be grasped by reason. The ideas of Plato they declared existedonly in our minds. Horse, man, and animal had no substantialexistence but were phantasms of the soul. The Stoics were thus whatwe should call Conceptualists. 

Comprehension too was used in a wider sense than that in which wehave so far employed it. There was comprehension by the senses as ofwhite and black, of rough and smooth, but there was alsocomprehension by the reason of demonstrative conclusions such as thatthe gods exist and that they exercise providence. Here we arereminded of Locke's declaration: "'Tis as certain there's a God asthat the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straightlines are equal. " The Stoics indeed had great affinities with thatthinker or rather he with them. The Stoic account of the manner inwhich the mind arrives at its ideas might almost be taken from thefirst book of Locke's _Essay_. As many as nine ways areenumerated of which the first corresponds to simple ideas--

(1) by presentation, as objects of sense

(2) by likeness, as the idea of Socrates from his picture

(3) by analogy, that is, by increase or decrease, as ideas of giantsand pigmies from men, or as the notion of the centre of the earth, which is reached by the consideration of smaller spheres. 

(4) by transposition, as the idea of men with eyes in their breasts. 

(5) by composition, as the idea of a Centaur. 

(6) by opposition, as the idea of death from that of life. 

(7) by a kind of transition, as the meaning of words and the idea ofplace. 

(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 adefinition of knowledge as should cover at once the reports of thesenses and the relation between ideas. Knowledge was defined by themas a sure comprehension or a habit in the acceptance of phantasieswhich was not liable to be changed by reason. On a first hearingthese definitions might seem limited to sense knowledge but if webethink ourselves of the wider meanings of comprehension and ofphantasy, we see that the definitions apply as they were meant toapply to the mind's grasp upon the force of a demonstration no lessthan 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 meansof gestures. Displaying his right hand with the fingers outstretchedhe would say, "That is a phantasy, " then contracting the fingers alittle, "That is assent, " then having closed the fist, "That iscomprehension, " then clasping the fist closely with the left hand, hewould add, "That is knowledge. "

A notion which corresponds to our word concept was defined as aphantasm of the understanding of a rational animal. For a notion wasbut a phantasm as it presented itself to a rational mind. In the sameway so many shillings and sovereigns are in themselves but shillingsand sovereigns, but when used as passage money they become fare. Notions were arrived at partly by nature, partly by teaching andstudy. The former kind of notions were called preconceptions; thelatter went merely by the generic name. 

Out of the general ideas which nature imparts to us, reason wasperfected about the age of fourteen, at the time when the voice--itsoutward and visible sign--attains its full development, and when thehuman animal is complete in other respects as being able to reproduceits kind. Thus reason which united us to the gods was not, accordingto the Stoics, a pre-existent principal, but a gradual developmentout of sense. It might truly be said that with them the senses werethe intellect. 

Being was confined by the Stoics to body, a bold assertion of whichwe shall meet the consequences later. At present it is sufficient tonotice what havoc it makes among the categories. Of Aristotle's tencategories it leaves only the first, Substance, and that only in itsnarrowest sense of Primary Substance. But a substance or body mightbe regarded in four ways-- (1) simply as a body (2) as a body of a particular kind (3) as a body in a particular state (4) as a body in a particular relation. 

Hence result the four Stoic categories of-- substrates suchlike so disposed so related

But the bodiless would not be thus conjured out of existence. Forwhat 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 tothese, and yet they had to be recognized and spoken of. Thedifficulty was got over by the invention of the higher category ofsomewhat, which should include both body and the bodiless. Time was asomewhat, and so was space, though neither of them possessed being. 

In the Stoic treatment of the proposition, grammar was very muchmixed up with logic. They had a wide name which applied to any partof diction, whether a word or words, a sentence, or even a syllogism. This we shall render by "dict. " A dict, then, was defined as "thatwhich subsists in correspondence with a rational phantasy. " A dictwas 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 lastwere bodies, but the intermediate one was not a body. This we mayillustrate after Seneca, as follows: "You see Cato walking. What youreyes 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 inmotion and therefore a body but the meaning of them is not a body butan enouncement about a body, which is quite a different thing. 

On examining such details as are left us of the Stoic logic, thefirst thing which strikes one is its extreme complexity as comparedwith the Aristotelian. It was a scholastic age, and the Stoicsrefined and distinguished to their hearts' content. As regardsimmediate inference, a subject which has been run into subtletiesamong ourselves, Chrysippus estimated that the changes which could berung on ten propositions exceeded a million, but for this assertionhe was taken to task by Hipparchus the mathematician, who proved thatthe affirmative proposition yielded exactly 103, 049 forms and thenegative 310, 962. With us the affirmative proposition is moreprolific in consequences than the negative. But then, the Stoics werenot content with so simple a thing as mere negation, but had negativearnetic and privative, to say nothing of supernegative propositions. Another noticeable feature is the total absence of the three figuresof Aristotle and the only moods spoken of are the moods of thecomplex syllogism, such as the _modus penens_ in a conjunctive. Their type of reasoning was-- If A, then B But A B

The important part played by conjunctive propositions in their logicled the Stoics to formulate the following rule with regard to thematerial quality of such propositions: Truth can only be followed bytruth, but falsehood may be followed by falsehood or truth. 

Thus if it be truly stated that it is day, any consequence of thatstatement, _e. G. _ that it is light, must be true also. But afalse statement may lead either way. For instance, if it be falselystated that it is night then the consequence that it is dark is falsealso. But if we say, "The earth flies, " which was regarded as notonly false but impossible [Footnote: Here we may recall the warningof Arago to call nothing impossible outside the range of puremathematics] this involves the true consequence that the earth is. Though the simple syllogism is not alluded to in the sketch whichDiogenes Laertius gives of the Stoic logic, it is of frequentoccurrence in the accounts left us of their arguments. Take forinstance the syllogism wherewith Zeno advocated the cause oftemperance-- One does not commit a secret to a man who is drunk. One does commit a secret to a good man. A good man will not get drunk. 

The chain argument which we wrongly call the Sorites was also afavorite resource with the Stoics. If a single syllogism did notsuffice to argue men into virtue surely a condensed series must beeffectual. And so they demonstrated the sufficiency of wisdom forhappiness as follows---- The wise man is temperate The temperate is constant The constant is unperturbed The unperturbed is free from sorrow Whoso is free from sorrow is happy The wise man is happy

The delight which the early Stoics took in this pure play of theintellect led them to pounce with avidity upon the abundant stock offallacies current among the Greeks of their time. These seem--most ofthem--to have been invented by the Megarians and especially byEubulides of Miletus a disciple of Eucleides but they becameassociated with the Stoics both by friends and foes who either praisetheir subtlety or deride their solemnity in dealing with them. Chrysippus himself was not above propounding such sophisms as thefollowing--

 Whoever divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated commits impiety The hierophant divulged the mysteries to the uninitiated The hierophant commits impiety

 Anything that you say passes through your mouth You say a wagon A wagon passes through your mouth

He is said to have written eleven books on the No-one fallacy. Butwhat seems to have exercised most of his ingenuity was the famousLiar, the invention of which is ascribed to Eubulides. This fallacyin its simplest form is as follows. If you say truly that you aretelling a lie, are you lying or telling the truth? Chrysippus setthis down as inexplicable. Nevertheless he was far from declining todiscuss it. For we find in the list of his works a treatise in fivebooks on the Inexplicables an Introduction to the Liar and Liars forIntroduction, six books on the Liar itself, a work directed againstthose who thought that such propositions were both false and true, another against those who professed to solve the Liar by a process ofdivision, three books on the solution of the Liar, and finally apolemic against those who asserted that the Liar had its premisesfalse. It was well for poor Philetas of Cos that he ended his daysbefore Chrysippus was born, though as it was he grew thin and died ofthe Liar, and his epitaph served as a solemn reminder to poets not tomeddle with logic--

 Philetas of Cos am I 'Twas the Liar who made me die And the bad nights caused thereby. 

Perhaps we owe him an apology for the translation. 

ETHIC

We have already had to touch upon the psychology of the Stoics inconnection with the first principles of logic. It is no lessnecessary to do so now in dealing with the foundation of ethic. 

The Stoics we are told reckoned that there were eight parts of thesoul. These were the five senses, the organ of sound, the intellectand the reproductive principle. The passions, it will be observed, are conspicuous by their absence. For the Stoic theory was that thepassions were simply the intellect in a diseased state owing to theperversions of falsehood. This is why the Stoics would not parleywith passion, conceiving that if once it were let into the citadel ofthe soul it would supplant the rightful ruler. Passion and reasonwere not two things which could be kept separate in which case itmight be hoped that reason would control passion, but were two statesof the same thing--a worse and a better. 

The unperturbed intellect was the legitimate monarch in the kingdomof man. Hence the Stoics commonly spoke of it as the leadingprinciple. This was the part of the soul which received phantasiesand it was also that in which impulses were generated with which wehave now more particularly to do. 

Impulse or appetition was the principle in the soul which impelled toaction. In an unperverted state it was directed only to things inaccordance with nature. The negative form of this principle or theavoidance of things as being contrary to nature, we shall callrepulsion. 

Notwithstanding the sublime heights to which Stoic morality rose. Itwas professedly based on self-love, wherein the Stoics were at onewith the other schools of thought in the ancient world. 

The earliest impulse that appeared in a newly born animal was toprotect itself and its own constitution which were conciliated to itby nature. What tended to its survival, it sought; what tended to itsdestruction, it shunned. Thus self-preservation was the first law oflife. 

While man was still in the merely animal stage, and before reason wasdeveloped in him, the things that were in accordance with his naturewere such as health, strength, good bodily condition, soundness ofall the senses, beauty, swiftness--in short all the qualities thatwent to make up richness of physical life and that contributed to thevital harmony. These were called the first things in accordance withnature. Their opposites were all contrary to nature, such assickness, weakness, mutilation. Under the first things in accordancewith nature came also congenial advantages of soul such as quicknessof intelligence, natural ability, industry, application, memory, andthe like. It was a question whether pleasure was to be included amongthe number. Some members of the school evidently though that it mightbe, but the orthodox opinion was that pleasure was a sort ofaftergrowth and that the direct pursuit of it was deleterious to theorganism. The after growths of virtue were joy, cheerfulness, and thelike. These were the gambolings of the spirit like the frolicsomenessof an animal in the full flush of its vitality or like the bloomingof a plant. For one and the same power manifested itself in all ranksof nature, only at each stage on a higher level. To the vegetativepowers of the plant the animal added sense and Impulse. It was inaccordance therefore with the nature of an animal to obey theImpulses of sense, but to sense and Impulse man superadded reason sothat when he became conscious of himself as a rational being, it wasin accordance with his nature to let all his Impulses be shaped bythis new and master hand. Virtue was therefore pre-eminently inaccordance with nature. What then we must now ask is the relation ofreason to impulse as conceived by the Stoics? Is reason simply theguiding, and impulse the motive power? Seneca protests against thisview, when impulse is identified with passion. One of his grounds fordoing so is that reason would be put on a level with passion, if thetwo were equally necessary for action. But the question is begged bythe use of the word 'passion, ' which was defined by the Stoics as 'anexcessive impulse. ' Is it possible then, even on Stoic principles, for reason to work without something different from itself to helpit? Or must we say that reason is itself a principle of action? HerePlutarch comes to our aid, who tells us on the authority ofChrysippus in his work on Law that impulse is 'the reason of mancommanding him to act, ' and similarly that repulsion is 'prohibitivereason. ' This renders the Stoic position unmistakable, and we mustaccomodate our minds to it in spite of its difficulties. Just as wehave seen already that reason is not something radically differentfrom sense, so now it appears that reason is not different fromimpulse, but itself the perfected form of impulse. Whenever impulseis not identical with reason--at least in a rational being--it is nottruly impulse, but passion. 

The Stoics, it will be observed, were Evolutionists in theirpsychology. But, like many Evolutionists at the present day, they didnot believe in the origin of mind out of matter. In all living thingsthere existed already what they called 'seminal reasons, ' whichaccounted for the intelligence displayed by plants as well as byanimals. As there were four cardinal virtues, so there were fourprimary passions. These were delight, grief, desire and fear. All ofthem were excited by the presence or the prospect of fancied good orill. What prompted desire by its prospect caused delight by itspresence, and what prompted fear by its prospect caused grief by itspresence. Thus two of the primary passions had to do with good andtwo with evil. All were furies which infested the life of fools, rendering it bitter and grievous to them; and it was the business ofphilosophy to fight against them. Nor was this strife a hopeless one, since the passions were not grounded in nature, but were due to falseopinion. They originated in voluntary judgements, and owed theirbirth to a lack of mental sobriety. If men wished to live the span oflife that was allotted to them in quietness and peace, they must byall means keep clear of the passions. 

The four primary passions having been formulated, it became necessaryto justify the division by arranging the specific forms of feelingunder these four heads. In this task the Stoics displayed a subtletywhich is of more interest to the lexicographer than to the student ofphilosophy. They laid great stress on the derivation of words asaffording a clue to their meaning; and, as their etymology was boundby no principles, their ingenuity was free to indulge in the wildestfreaks of fancy. 

Though all passion stood self-condemned, there were neverthelesscertain 'eupathies, ' or happy affections, which would be experiencedby the ideally good and wise man. These were not perturbations of thesoul, but rather 'constancies'; they were not opposed to reason, butwere rather part of reason. Though the sage would never betransported with delight, he would still feel an abiding 'joy' in thepresence of the true and only good; he would never indeed be agitatedby desire, but still he would be animated by 'wish, ' for that wasdirected only to the good; and though he would never feel fear stillhe would be actuated in danger by a proper caution. 

There was therefore something rational corresponding to three out offour primary passions--against delight was to be set joy; againstgrief there was nothing to be set, for that arose from the presenceof ill which would rather never attach to the sage. Grief was theirrational conviction that one ought to afflict oneself where therewas no occasion for it. The ideal of the Stoics was the uncloudedserenity of Socrates of whom Xanthippe declared that he had alwaysthe same face whether on leaving the house In the morning or onreturning to it at night. 

As the motley crowd of passions followed the banners of their fourleaders so specific forms of feeling sanctioned by reason wereseverally assigned to the three eupathies. 

Things were divided by Zeno into good, bad, and indifferent. To goodbelonged virtue and what partook of virtue; to bad, vice and whatpartook of vice. All other things were indifferent. 

To the third class then belonged such things as life and death, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, strengthand weakness, honour and dishonour, wealth and poverty, victory anddefeat, nobility and baseness of birth. 

Good was defined as that which benefits. To confer benefit was noless essential to good than to impart warmth was to heat. If oneasked in what 'to benefit' lay one received the reply that it lay inproducing an act or state in accordance with virtue, and similarly itwas laid down that 'to hurt' lay in producing an act or state inaccordance with vice. 

The indifference of things other than virtue and vice was apparentfrom the definition of good which made it essentially beneficial. Such things as health and wealth might be beneficial or not accordingto circumstances; they were therefore no more good than bad. Again, nothing could be really good of which the good or ill depended on theuse made of it, but this was the case with things like health andwealth. 

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 wasright was to say that it was good, and conversely to say that it wasgood was to say that it was right; this absolute identity between thegood and the right and, on the other hand, between the bad and wrong, was the head and front of the Stoic ethics. The right contained initself all that was necessary for the happy life, the wrong was theonly evil, and made men miserable whether they knew it or not. 

As virtue was itself the end, it was of course choiceworthy in andfor itself, apart from hope or fear with regard to its consequences. Moreover, as being the highest good, it could admit of no increasefrom the addition of things indifferent. It did not even admit ofincrease from the prolongation of its own existence, for the questionwas not one of quantity, but of quality. Virtue for an eternity wasno more virtue, and therefore no more good, than virtue for a moment. Even so one circle was no more round than another, whatever you mightchoose to make its diameter, nor would it detract from the perfectionof a circle if it were to be obliterated immediately in the same dustin which it had been drawn. 

To say that the good of men lay in virtue was another way of sayingthat it lay in reason, since virtue was the perfection of reason. 

As reason was the only thing whereby Nature had distinguished manfrom 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 thenature of anything was meant, not that which we actually find it tobe, but that which in the eternal fitness of things it was obviouslyintended to become. 

To be happy then was to be virtuous, to be virtuous was to berational, to be rational was to follow Nature, and to follow Naturewas to obey God. Virtue imparted to life that even flow in which Zenodeclared happiness to consist. This was attained when one's owngenius was in harmony with the will that disposed of all things. 

Virtue having been purified from all the dross of the emotions, cameout as something purely intellectual, so that the Stoics agreed withthe Socratic conception that virtue is knowledge. They also took onfrom Plato the four cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Temperance, Courage, and Justice, and defined them as so many branches of knowledge. Against these were set four cardinal vices of Folly, Intemperance, Cowardice, and Injustice. Under both the virtues and vices there wasan elaborate classification of specific qualities. Butnotwithstanding the care with which the Stoics divided and subdividedthe virtues, virtue, according to their doctrine, was all the timeone and indivisible. For virtue was simply reason and reason, if itwere there, must control every department of conduct alike. 'He whohas one virtue has all, ' was a paradox with which the Greek thoughtwas already familiar. But Chrysippus went beyond this, declaring thathe who displayed one virtue did thereby display all. Neither was theman perfect who did not possess all the virtues, nor was the actperfect which did not involve them all. Where the virtues differedfrom one another was merely in the order in which they put things. Each was primarily itself, secondarily all the rest. Wisdom had todetermine what it was right to do, but this involved the othervirtues. Temperance had to impart stability to the impulses, but howcould the term 'temperate' be applied to a man who deserted his postthrough cowardice, or who failed to return a deposit through avarice, which is a form of injustice, or yet to one who misconducted affairsthrough rashness, which falls under folly? Courage had to facedangers and difficulties, but it was not courage unless its causewere just. Indeed one of the ways in which courage was defined was avirtue fighting on behalf of justice. Similarly justice put first theassigning to each man his due, but in the act of doing so had tobring in the other virtues. In short, it was the business of the manof virtue to know and to do what ought to be done, for what ought tobe done implied wisdom in choice, courage in endurance, justice inassignment and temperance in abiding by ones conviction. One virtuenever acted by itself, but always on the advice of a committee. Theobverse to this paradox--He who has one vice has all vices--was aconclusion which the Stoics did not shrink from drawing. One mightlose part of one's Corinthian ware and still retain the rest, but tolose one virtue--if virtue could be lost--would be to lose all alongwith it. 

We have now encountered the first paradox of Stoicism, and candiscern its origin in the identification of virtue with pure reason. In getting forth the novelties in Zeno's teaching, Cicero mentionsthat, while his predecessors had recognized virtues due to nature andhabit, he made all dependent upon reason. A natural consequence ofthis was the reassertion of the position which Plato held or wishedto hold, namely, that virtue can be taught. But the part played bynature in virtue cannot be ignored. It was not in the power of Zenoto alter facts. All he could do was to legislate as to names. Andthis he did vigorously. Nothing was to be called virtue which was notof the nature of reason and knowledge, but still it had to beadmitted that nature supplied the starting points for the fourcardinal virtues--for the discovery of one's impulses, for rightendurances and harmonious distributions. 

From things good and bad we now turn to things indifferent. Hithertothe Stoic doctrine has been stern and uncompromising. We have now tolook at it under a different aspect, and to see how it tried toconciliate common sense. 

By things indifferent were meant such as did not necessarilycontribute to virtue, for instance health, wealth, strength, andhonor. It is possible to have all these and not be virtuous, it ispossible also to be virtuous without them. But we have now to learnthat though these things are neither good nor evil, and are thereforenot matter for choice or avoidance, they are far from beingindifferent 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 youstoop to pick up a straw or not, whether the number of hairs on yourhead be odd or even. But things of this sort are exceptional. Thebulk of things other than virtue and vice do arouse in us eitherimpulse or repulsion. Let it be understood then that there are twosenses of the word indifferent-- (1) neither good nor bad (2) neither awaking impulse nor repulsion

Among things indifferent in the former sense, some were in accordancewith nature, some were contrary to nature and some were neither onenor the other. Health, strengths and soundness of the senses were inaccordance with nature; sickness weakness and mutilation werecontrary to nature, but such things as the fallibility of the souland the vulnerability of the body were neither in accordance withnature nor yet contrary to nature, but just nature. 

All things that were in accordance with nature had 'value' and allthings that were contrary to nature had what we must call 'disvalue'. In the highest sense indeed of the term 'value'--namely that ofabsolute value or worth--things indifferent did not possess any valueat all. But still there might be assigned to them what Antipaterexpressed by the term 'a selective value' or what he expressed by itsbarbarous privative, 'a disselective disvalue'. If a thing possesseda selective value you took that thing rather than its contrary, supposing that circumstances allowed, for instance, health ratherthan sickness, wealth rather than poverty, life rather than death. Hence such things were called takeable and their contrariesuntakeable. Things that possessed a high degree of value were calledpreferred, those that possessed a high degree of disvalue were calledrejected. Such as possessed no considerable degree of either wereneither preferred nor rejected. Zeno, with whom these namesoriginated, justified their use about things really indifferent onthe ground that at court "preferment" could not be bestowed upon theking himself, but only on his ministers. 

Things preferred and rejected might belong to mind, body or estate. Among things preferred in the case of the mind were natural ability, art, moral progress, and the like, while their contraries wererejected. In the case of the body, life, health, strength, goodcondition, completeness, and beauty were preferred, while death, sickness, weakness, ill condition, mutilation and ugliness wererejected. Among things external to soul and body, wealth, reputation, and nobility were preferred, while poverty, ill repute, and basenessof birth were rejected. 

In this way all mundane and marketable goods, after having beensolemnly refused admittance by the Stoics at the front door, weresmuggled in at a kind of tradesman's entrance under the name ofthings indifferent. We must now see how they had, as it were, twomoral codes, one for the sage and the other for the world in general. 

The sage alone could act rightly, but other people might perform "theproprieties. " Any one might honor his parents, but the sage alone didit as the outcome of wisdom, because he alone possessed the art oflife, the peculiar work of which was to do everything that was doneas the result of the best disposition. All the acts of the sage were"perfect proprieties, " which were called "rightnesses. " All acts ofall other men were sins or "wrongnesses. " At their best they couldonly be "intermediate proprieties. " The term "propriety, " then, is ageneric one. But, as often happens, the generic term got determinedin use to a specific meaning, so that intermediate acts are commonlyspoken of as "proprieties" in opposition to "rightnesses. " Instancesof "rightnesses" are displaying wisdom and dealing justly, instancesof proprieties or intermediate acts are marrying, going on anembassy, and dialectic. 

The word "duty" is often employed to translate the Greek term whichwe are rendering by "propriety. " Any translation is no more than achoice of evils, since we have no real equivalent for the term. Itwas applicable not merely to human conduct, but also to the acting ofthe lower animals, and even to the growth of plants. Now, apart froma craze of generalization we should hardly think of the "sterndaughter of the voice of God" in connection with an amoebacorresponding successfully to stimulus, yet the creature in itsinchoate way is exhibiting a dim analogy to duty. The term inquestion was first used by Zeno, and was explained by him, inaccordance with its etymology, to mean what it came to one to do, sothat as far as this goes, 'becomingness' would be the mostappropriate translation. 

The sphere of propriety was confined to things indifferent, so thatthere were proprieties which were common to the sage and the fool. Ithad to do with taking the things which were in accordance with natureand rejecting those that were not. Even the propriety of living ordying was determined, not by reference to virtue or vice, but to thepreponderance or deficiency of things in accordance with nature. Itmight thus be a propriety for the sage in spite of his happiness, todepart from life of his own accord, and for the fool notwithstandinghis misery, to remain in it. Life, being in itself indifferent, thewhole question was one of opportunism. Wisdom might prompt theleaving herself should occasion seem to call for it. 

We pass on now another instance of accommodation. According to thehigh Stoic doctrine, there was no mean between virtue and vice. Allmen indeed received from nature the starting-points for virtue, butuntil perfection had been attained they rested under the condemnationof vice. It was, to employ an illustration of the poet-philosopherCleanthes, as though Nature had begun an iambic line and left men tofinish it. Until that was done they were to wear the fool's cap. ThePeripatetics, on the other hand, recognized an intermediate statebetween virtue and vice, to which they gave the name of progress andproficience. Yet so entirely had the Stoics, for practical purposes, to accept this lower level, that the word "proficience" has come tobe spoken of as though it were of Stoic origin. 

Seneca is fond of contrasting the sage with the proficient. The sageis like a man in the enjoyment of perfect health. But the proficientis like a man recovering from a severe illness, with whom anabatement of the paroxysm is equivalent to health, and who is alwaysin danger of a relapse. It is the business of philosophy to providefor the needs of these weaker brethren. The proficient is stillcalled a fool, but it is pointed out that he is a very different kindof fool from the rest. Further, proficients are arranged into threeclasses, in a way that reminds one of the technicalities ofCalvinistic theology. First of all, there are those who are nearwisdom, but, however near they may be to the door of Heaven, they arestill on the wrong side of it. According to some doctors, these werealready safe from backsliding, differing from the sage only in nothaving yet realized that they had attained to knowledge; otherauthorities, however, refused to admit this, and regarded the firstclass as being exempt only from settled diseases of the soul, but notfrom passing attacks of passion. Thus did the Stoics differ amongthemselves as to the doctrine of "final assurance". The second classconsisted of those who had laid aside the worst diseases and passionsof the soul, but might at any moment relapse into them. The thirdclass was of those who had escaped one mental malady but not another;who had conquered lust, let us say, but not ambition; who disregardeddeath, but dreaded pain, This third class, adds Seneca, is by nomeans to be despised. 

From these concessions to the weakness of humanity we now pass to theStoic paradoxes, where we shall see their doctrine in its full rigor. It is perhaps these very paradoxes which account for the puzzledfascination with which Stoicism affected the mind of antiquity, justas obscurity in a poet may prove a surer passport to fame than morestrictly poetical merits. 

The root of Stoicism being a paradox, it is not surprising that theoffshoots should be so too. To say that "Virtue is the highest good"is a proposition to which every one who aspires to the spiritual lifemust yield assent with his lips, even if he has not yet learned tobelieve 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 ofparadoxes. By a paradox is meant that which runs counter to generalopinion. Now it is quite certain that men have regarded, do regard, and, we may safely add will regard things as good which are notvirtue. But if we grant this initial paradox, a great many otherswill follow along with it--as for instance that "Virtue is sufficientof itself for happiness". The fifth book of Cicero's _TusculanDisputations_ is an eloquent defense of this thesis, in which theorator combats the suggestion that a good man is not happy when he isbeing 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. Anangle must be either a right angle or not, a line must be eitherstraight or crooked, so an act must be either right or wrong. Thereis no mean between the two and there are no degrees of either. To sinis to cross the line. When once that has been done it makes nodifference to the offense how far you go. Trespassing at all isforbidden. This doctrine was defended by the Stoics on account of itsbracing moral effect as showing the heinousness of sin. Horace givesthe 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 ismad". "Only the sage is free and every fool is a slave". "The sagealone is wealthy". "Good men are always happy and bad men alwaysmiserable". "All goods are equal". "No one is wiser or happier thananother". But may not one man we ask be more nearly wise or morenearly happy than another? "That may be", the Stoics would reply, "but the man who is only one stade from Canopus is as much not inCanopus as the man who is a hundred stades off; and the eight day oldpuppy is still as blind as on the day of its birth; nor can a man whois near the surface of the sea breathe any more than if he were fullfive hundred fathom down". 

It is only fair to the Stoics to add that paradoxes were quite theorder of the day in Greece, though they greatly outdid other schoolsin producing them. Socrates himself was the father of paradox. Epicurus maintained as staunchly as any Stoic that "No wise man isunhappy", and, if he be not belied, went the length of declaring thatthe wise man, if put into the bull of Phalaris would exclaim: "Howdelightful! How little I mind this!"

It is out of keeping with common sense to draw a hard and fastdistinction between good and bad. Yet this was what the Stoics did. They insisted on effecting here and now that separation between thesheep 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. 

The good man of the Stoics was variously known as 'the sage', or, 'the serious man', the latter name being inherited from thePeripatetics. We used to hear it said among ourselves that a personhad become serious, when he or she had taken to religion. Anotherappellation which the Stoics had for the sage was 'the urbane man', while the fool in contradistinction was called 'a boor'. Boorishnesswas defined as an inexperience of the customs and laws of the state. By the state was meant, not Athens or Sparta, as would have been thecase in a former age, but the society of all rational beings intowhich the Stoics spiritualised the state. The sage alone had thefreedom of this city and the fool was therefore not only a boor, butan alien or an exile. In this city, Justice was natural and notconventional, for the law by which it was governed was the law ofright reason. The law then was spiritualised by the Stoics, just asthe state was. It no longer meant the enactments of this or thatcommunity, but the mandates of the eternal reason which ruled theworld and which would prevail in the ideal state. Law was defined asright reason commanding what was to be done and forbidding what wasnot to be done. As such, it in no way differed from the impulse ofthe sage himself. 

As a member of a state and by nature subject to law, man wasessentially a social being. Between all the wise there existed"unanimity, " which was "a knowledge of the common good, " becausetheir views of life were harmonious. Fools, on the other hand, whoseviews of life were discordant, were enemies to one another and benton 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 theideal type. But, if the circumstances were such as to make it certainthat his embarking on politics would be of no service to his country, and only a source of danger to himself, then he would refrain. Thekind of constitution of which the Stoics most approved was a mixedgovernment containing democratic, aristocratic, and monarchicalelements. Where circumstances allowed the sage would act aslegislator, and would educate mankind, one way of doing which was bywriting books which would prove of profit to the reader. 

As a member of existing society the sage would marry and begetchildren, both for his own sake and for that of his country, onbehalf of which, if it were good, he would be ready to suffer anddie. Still he would look forward to a better time when, in Zeno's asin Plato's republic, the wise would have women and children incommon, when the elders would love all the rising generation equallywith parental fondness, and when marital jealousy would be no more. 

As being essentially a social being, the sage was endowed not onlywith the graver political virtues, but also with the graces of life. He was sociable, tactful and stimulating, using conversation as ameans for promoting good will and friendship; so far as might be, hewas all things to all men, which made him fascinating and charming, insinuating and even wily; he know how to hit the point and to choosethe right moment, yet with it all he was plain and unostentatious andsimple and unaffected; in particular he never delighted in irony muchless in sarcasm. 

From the social characteristics of the sage we turn now to a side ofhis character which appears eminently anti-social. One of his mosthighly vaunted characteristics was his self-sufficingness. He was tobe able to step out of a burning city, coming from the wreck not onlyof his fortunes, but of his friends and family, and to declare with asmile that he has lost nothing. All that he truly cared for was to becentered in himself. Only thus could he be sure that Fortune wouldnot wrest it from him. 

The apathy or passionlessness of the sage is another of his mostsalient features. The passions being, on Zeno's showing, not natural, but forms of disease, the sage, as being the perfect man, would ofcourse be wholly free from them. They were so many disturbances ofthe even flow in which his bliss lay. The sage therefore would neverbe moved by a feeling of favour towards any one; he would neverpardon a fault; he would never feel pity; he would never be prevailedupon by entreaty; he would never be stirred to anger. 

As to the absence of pity in the sage, the Stoics themselves musthave felt some difficulty there since we find Epictetus recommendinghis hearers to show grief out of sympathy for another, but to becareful not to feel it. The inexorability of the sage was a mereconsequence of his calm reasonableness, which would lead him to takethe right view from the first. Lastly, the sage would never bestirred to anger. For why should it stir his anger to see another inhis ignorance injuring himself?

One more touch has yet to be added to the apathy of the sage. He wasimpervious to wonder. No miracle of nature could excite hisastonishment--no mephitic caverns, which men deemed the mouths ofhell, no deep-drawn ebb tides--the standing marvel of theMediterranean dweller, 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 doctrinewhich was never broached in the schools before Zeno. The sage, it wasmaintained, held no opinions, he never repented of his conduct, hewas never deceived in anything. Between the daylight of knowledge anddarkness of nescience Plato had interposed the twilight of opinionwherein 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 withwhom he so imperfectly sympathized: "His understanding is always atits meridian--you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. " Hehas no falterings of self suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half intuitions, semiconsciousness, partial illuminations, diminstincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain orvocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Opinion, whether in the form of an ungripped assent, or a weak supposition, was alien from the mental disposition of the serious man. With himthere was no hasty or premature assent of the understanding, noforgetfulness, no distrust. He never allowed himself to beoverreached or deluded, never had need of an arbiter, never was outin his reckoning nor put out by another. No urbane man ever wanderedfrom his way, or missed his mark, or saw wrong, or heard amiss, orerred in any of his senses; he never conjectured nor thought of abetter thing, for the one was a form of imperfect assent, and theother a sign of previous precipitancy. There was with him no change, no retraction, and no tripping. These things were for those whosedogmas could alter. After this it is almost superfluous for us to beassured that the sage never got drunk. Drunkenness, as Zeno pointedout, involved babbling, and of that the sage would never be guilty. He would not, however, altogether eschew banquets. Indeed, the Stoicsrecognized a virtue under the name of 'conviviality, ' which consistedin the proper conduct of them. It was said of Chrysippus that hisdemeanor was always quiet, even if his gait were unsteady, so thathis housekeeper declared that only his legs were drunk. 

There were pleasantries even within the school on this subject ofinfallibility of the sage. Aristo of Chios, while seceding on someother matters, held fast to the dogma that the sage never opined. Whereupon Persaeus played a trick upon him. He made one of two twinbrothers deposit a sum of money with him and the other call toreclaim it. The success of the trick however only went to establishthat Aristo was not the sage, an admission which each of the Stoicsseems to have been ready enough to make on his own part, as theresponsibilities of the position were so fatiguing. 

There remains one more leading characteristic of the sage, the moststriking of them all, and the most important from the ethical pointof view. This was his innocence or harmlessness. He would not harmothers and was not to be harmed by them. For the Stoics believed withSocrates that it was not permissible by the divine law for a betterman to be harmed by a worse. You could not harm the sage any morethan you could harm the sunlight; he was in our world, but not of it. There was no possibility of evil for him, save in his own will, andthat you could not touch. And as the sage was beyond harm, so alsowas he above insult. Men might disgrace themselves by their insolentattitude towards his mild majesty, but it was not in their power todisgrace him. 

As the Stoics had their analogue to the tenet of final assurance, sohad they also to that of sudden conversion. They held that a manmight become a sage without being at first aware of it. Theabruptness of the transition from folly to wisdom was in keeping withtheir principle that there was no medium between the two, but it wasnaturally a point which attracted the strictures of their opponents. That a man should be at one moment stupid and ignorant and unjust andintemperate, a slave and poor, and destitute, at the next a king, rich, and prosperous, temperate, and just, secure in his judgementsand exempt from error, was a transformation, they declared, whichsmacked more of the fairy tales of the nursery than of the doctrinesof a sober philosophy. 

PHYSIC

We have now before us the main facts with regard to the Stoic view ofman's nature, but we have yet to see in what setting they were put. What was the Stoic outlook upon the universe? The answer to thisquestion is supplied by their Physic. 

There were, according to the Stoics, two first principles of allthings, the active and the passive. The passive was that unqualifiedbeing which is known as Matter. The active was the Logos, or reasonin it, which is God. This, it was held, eternally pervades matter andcreates all things. This dogma, laid down by Zeno, was repeated afterhim by the subsequent heads of the school. 

There were then two first principles, but there were not two causesof things. The active principle alone was cause, the other was merematerial for it to work on--inert, senseless, destitute in itself ofall shape and qualities, but ready to assume any qualities or shape. 

Matter was defined as that out of which anything is produced. ThePrime Matter, or unqualified being, was eternal and did not admit ofincrease or decrease, but only of change. It was the substance orbeing of all things that are. 

The Stoics, it will be observed, used the term "matter" with the sameconfusing ambiguity with which we use it ourselves, now for sensibleobjects which have shape and other qualities, now for the abstractconception of matter, which is devoid of all qualities. 

Both these first principles, it must be understood, were conceived ofas bodies, though without form, the one everywhere interpenetratingthe other. To say that the passive principle, or matter, is a bodycomes easy to us, because of the familiar confusion adverted toabove. But how could the active principle, or God, be conceived of asa body? The answer to this question may sound paradoxical. It isbecause God is a spirit. A spirit in its original sense meant air inmotion. Now the active principle was not air, but it was somethingwhich bore an analogy to it--namely aether. Aether in motion might becalled a 'spirit' as well as air in motion. It was in this sense thatChrysippus defined the thing that is, to be a spirit moving itselfinto and out of itself, or spirit moving itself to and fro. 

From the two first principles which are ungenerated andindestructible must be distinguished the four elements which, thoughultimate for us, yet were produced in the beginning by God and aredestined some day to be reabsorbed into the divine nature. These withthe Stoics were the same which had been accepted sinceEmpedocles--namely earth, air, fire and water. The elements, like thetwo first principles were bodies; unlike them, they were declared tohave shape as well as extension. 

An element was defined as that out of which things at first come intobeing and into which they are at last resolved. In this relation didthe four elements stand to all the compound bodies which the universecontained. The terms earth, air, fire and water had to be taken in awide sense: earth meaning all that was of the nature of earth, airall that was of the nature of air and so on. Thus, in the humanframe, the bones and sinews pertained to earth. 

The four qualities of matter--hot, cold, moist and dry--wereindicative of the presence of the four elements. Fire was the sourceof heat, air of cold, water of moisture, and earth of dryness. Between them, the four elements made up the unqualified being calledMatter. All animals and other compound natures on earth had in themrepresentatives of the four great physical constituents of theuniverse, but the moon, according to Chrysippus, consisted only offire 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. Twoof them, fire and air, were light; the other two, water and earth, were heavy. By 'light' was meant that which tends away from its owncentre, by 'heavy, ' that which, tends towards it. The two lightelements stood to the two heavy ones in much the same relation as theactive to the passive principle generally. But further, fire had sucha primary as entitles it, if the definition of element were pressed, to be considered alone worthy of the name. For the three otherelements arose out of it and were to be again resolved into it. 

We should obtain a wholly wrong impression of what Bishop Berkeleycalls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in thisconnection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Letus rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign andbeatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestriallife. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the onedestructive, the other what we may call 'constructive, ' and which hecalled 'artistic'. This latter kind of fire, which was known asaether, was the substance of the heavenly bodies, as it was also ofthe soul of animals and of the 'nature' of plants. Chrysippus, following Heraclitus, taught that the elements passed into oneanother by a process of condensation and rarefaction. Fire firstbecame solidified into air, then air into water and lastly water intoearth. 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 an anticipation ofthe modern idea of different states of matter--the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous, with a fourth beyond the gaseous which science canstill only guess at, and in which matter seems almost to merge intospirit. 

Each of the four elements had its own abode in the universe. Outermost of all was the ethereal 'fire' which was divided into twospheres: first that of the fixed stars and next that of the planets. Below this lay the sphere of 'air', below this again that of 'water', and lowest or in other words, most central of all was the sphere of'earth', the solid foundation of the whole structure. Water might besaid to be above earth because nowhere was there water to be foundwithout earth beneath it, but the surface of water was alwaysequidistant from the centre, whereas earth had prominences which roseabove water. 

When we say that the Stoics regarded the universe as a plenum, thereader must understand by 'the universe' the Cosmos or ordered whole. Within this there was no emptiness owing to the pressure of thecelestial upon the terrestrial sphere. But outside of this lay theinfinite void without beginning, middle, or end. This occupied a veryambiguous position In their scheme. It was not being, for being wasconfined to body and yet it was there. It was in fact nothing, andthat was why it was infinite. For as nothing cannot be bound to anything, so neither can there be any bound to nothing. But whilebodiless itself, it had the capacity to contain body, a fact whichenabled it, despite its non-entity, to serve, as we shall see, auseful purpose. 

Did the Stoics then regard the universe as finite or as infinite? Inanswering 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 cosmosonly. This distinction we may suppose to have originated with thelater members of the school. For Appolodorus noted the ambiguity ofthe word 'All' as meaning, (1) the cosmos only, (2) cosmos + void

If then by the term "universe" we understand the cosmos, or orderedwhole, we must say that the Stoics regarded the universe as finite. All being and all body, which was the same thing with being, hadnecessarily bounds, it was only not being, which was boundless. 

Another distinction, due this time to Chrysippus himself, which theStoics found it convenient to draw, was between the three words'void, ' 'place' and 'space'. Void was defined as 'the absence ofbody', place was that which was occupied by body, the term 'space'was reserved for that which was partly occupied and partlyunoccupied. As there was no corner of the cosmos unfilled by body, space, it will be seen, was another name for the All. Place wascompared to a vessel that was full, void to one that was empty, andspace to the vast wine-cask, such as that in which Diogenes made hishome, which was kept partly fully, but in which there was always roomfor more. The last comparison must of course not be pressed. For ifspace be a cask, it is one without top, bottom or sides. 

But while the Stoics regarded our universe as an island of being inan ocean of void, they did not admit the possibility that other suchislands might exist beyond our ken. The spectacle of the starryheavens, which presented itself nightly to their gaze in all thebrilliancy of a southern sky--that was all there was of being, beyondthat lay nothingness. Democritus or the Epicureans might dream ofother worlds, but the Stoics contended for the unity of the cosmos asstaunchly as the Mahometans for the unity of God, for with them thecosmos was God. 

In shape they conceived of it as spherical, on the ground that thesphere was the perfect figure and was also the best adapted formotion. Not that the universe as a whole moved. The earth lay in itscentre, spherical and motionless, and round it coursed the sun, moon, and planets, fixed each in its respective sphere as in so manyconcentric rings, while the outermost ring of all, which containedthe fixed stars, wheeled round the rest with an inconceivablevelocity. 

The tendency of all things in the universe to the centre kept theearth fixed in the middle as being subject to an equal pressure onevery side. The same cause also, according to Zeno, kept the universeitself at rest in the void. But in an infinite void, it could make nodifference whether the whole were at rest or in motion. It may havebeen a desire to escape the notion of a migratory whole which ledZeno to broach the curious doctrine that the universe has no weight, as being composed of elements whereof two are heavy and two arelight. Air and fire did indeed tend to the centre like everythingelse in the cosmos, but not till they had reached their natural home. Till then they were of an upward-growing nature. It appears then thatthe upward and downward tendencies of the elements were held toneutralise one another and to leave the universe devoid of weight. 

The universe was the only thing which was perfect in itself, the onething which was an end in itself. All other things were perfectindeed as parts, when considered with reference to the whole, butwere none of them ends in themselves, unless man could be deemed sowho was born to contemplate the universe and imitate its perfections. Thus, then, did the Stoics envisage the universe on its physicalside--as one, finite, fixed in space, but revolving round its owncentre, earth, beautiful beyond all things, and perfect as a whole. 

But it was impossible for this order and beauty to exist withoutmind. The universe was pervaded by intelligence as man's body ispervaded by his soul. But as the human soul though everywhere presentin the body is not present everywhere in the same degree, so it waswith the world-soul. The human soul presents itself not only asintellect, but also in the lower manifestations of sense, growth, andcohesion. It is the soul which is the cause of the plant life, whichdisplays itself more particularly in the nails and hair; it is thesoul also which causes cohesion among the parts of the solidsubstances such as bones and sinews, that make up our frame. In thesame way the world-soul displayed itself in rational beings asintellect, in the lower animals as mere souls, in plants as nature orgrowth, and in inorganic substances as 'holding' or cohesion. To thislowest stage add change, and you have growth or plant nature;super-add to this phantasy and impulse and you rise to the soul ofirrational animals; at a yet higher stage you reach the rational anddiscursive 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 inthe strict sense. What animated them was 'nature' or, as we havecalled it above, 'growth'. Nature, in this sense of the principle ofgrowth, was defined by the Stoics as 'a constructive fire, proceedingin a regular way to production, ' or 'a fiery spirit endowed withartistic skill'. That Nature was an artist needed no proof, since itwas her handiwork that human art essayed to copy. But she was anartist who combined the useful with the pleasant, aiming at once atbeauty and convenience. In the widest sense, Nature was another namefor Providence, or the principle which held the universe together, but, as the term is now being employed, it stood for that degree ofexistence which is above cohesion and below soul. From this point ofview, it was defined as "a cohesion subject to self originated changein accordance with seminal reasons effecting and maintaining itsresults in definite times, and reproducing in the offspring thecharacteristics of the parent". This sounds about as abstract asHerbert Spencer's definition of life, but it must be borne in mindthat nature was all the time a 'spirit', and as such a body. It was abody of a less subtle essence than soul. Similarly, when the Stoicsspoke of cohesion, they are not to be taken as referring to someabstract principle like attraction. 'Cohesions, ' said Chrysippus, 'are nothing else than airs, for it is by these that bodies are heldtogether, and of the individual qualities of things which are heldtogether by cohesion, it is the air which is the compressing causewhich in iron is called "hardness", in stone "thickness" and insolver "whiteness"'. Not only solidarity then, but also colours, which Zeno called 'the first schematisms' of matter were regarded asdue to the mysterious agency of air. In fact, qualities in generalwere but blasts and tensions of the air, which gave form and figureto the inert matter underlying them. 

As the man is in one sense the soul, in another the body, and in athird the union of both, so it was with the cosmos. The word was usedin three senses-- (1) God (2) the arrangement of the stars, etc. (3) the combination of both. 

The cosmos as identical with God was described as an individual madeup of all being who is incorruptible and ungenerated, the fashionerof the ordered frame of the universe, who at certain periods of timeabsorbs all being into himself and again generates it from himself. Thus the cosmos on its external side was doomed to perish and themode of its destruction was to be by fire, a doctrine which has beenstamped upon the world's belief down to the present day. What was tobring about this consummation was the soul of the universe becomingtoo big for its body, which it would eventually swallow upaltogether. In the efflagration, when everything went back to theprimeval aether, the universe would be pure soul and alive equallythrough and through. In this subtle and attenuated state, it wouldrequire more room than before and so expand into the void, contracting again when another period of cosmic generation had setin. Hence the Stoic definition of the Void or Infinite as that intowhich the cosmos is resolved at the efflagration. 

In this theory of the contraction of the universe out of an etherealstate and ultimate return to the same condition one sees aresemblance to the modern scientific hypothesis of the origin of ourplanetary system out of the solar nebula, and its predestined end inthe same. Especially is this the case with the form in which thetheory was held by Cleanthes, who pictured the heavenly bodies ashastening to their own destruction by dashing themselves, like somany gigantic moths, into the sun. Cleanthes however did not conceivemere mechanical force to be at work in this matter. The grandapotheosis of suicide which he foresaw was a voluntary act; for theheavenly bodies were Gods and were willing to lose their own in alarger 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 weremade of wax or tin. Zeus then would be left alone with his ownthoughts, or as the Stoics sometimes put it, Zeus would fall backupon Providence. For by Providence they meant the leading principleor mind of the whole, and by Zeus, as distinguished from Providence, this mind together with the cosmos, which was to it as body. In theefflagration the two would be fused into one in the single substanceof aether. And then in the fulness of time there would be arestitution of all things. Everything would come round regularlyagain exactly as it had been before. 

To us who have been taught to pant for progress, this seems a drearyprospect. But the Stoics were consistent Optimists, and did not askfor a change in what was best. They were content that the one dramaof existence should enjoy a perpetual run without perhaps too nice aconsideration for the actors. Death intermitted life, but did not endit. For the candle of life, which was extinguished now, would bekindled again hereafter. Being and not being came round in endlesssuccession for all save him, into whom all being was resolved, andout of whom it emerged again, as from the vortex of some aeonianMaelstrom. 

CONCLUSION

When Socrates declared before his judges that "there is no evil to agood man either in life or after death, nor are his affairs neglectedby the gods", he sounded the keynote of Stoicism, with its two maindoctrines of virtue as the only good, and the government of the worldby Providence. Let us weigh his words, lest we interpret them by thelight of a comfortable modern piety. A great many things that arecommonly called evil may and do happen to a good man in this life, and therefore presumably misfortunes may also overtake him in anyother life that there may be. The only evil that can never befall himis vice, because that would be a contradiction in terms. Unlesstherefore Socrates was uttering idle words on the most solemnoccasion of his life, he must be taken to have meant that there is noevil but vice, which implies that there is no good but virtue. Thuswe are landed at once in the heart of the Stoic morality. To thequestion why, if there be a providence, so many evils happen to goodmen, 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 andselfish designs and blind lust and grasping avarice. He has attendedwell to themselves, but he cannot be expected to look after theirluggage: they relieve him of that care by being indifferent about it. This is the only form in which the doctrine of divine providence canbe held consistently with the facts of life Again, when Socrates onthe same occasion expressed his belief that it was not "permitted bythe divine law for a better man to be harmed by a worse", he wasasserting by implication the Stoic position. Neither Meletus norAnytus could harm him, though they might have him killed or banished, or disfranchised. This passage of the Apology, in a condensed form, is adopted by Epictetus as one of the watchwords of Stoicism. 

There is nothing more distinctive of Socrates than the doctrine thatvirtue is knowledge. Here too the Stoics followed him, ignoring allthat Aristotle had done in showing the part played by the emotionsand the will in virtue. Reason was with them a principle of action;with Aristotle it was a principle that guided action, but the motivepower had to come from elsewhere. Socrates must even be heldresponsible for the Stoic paradox of the madness of all ordinaryfolk. 

The Stoics did not owe much to the Peripatetics. There was too muchbalance about the master mind of Aristotle for their narrowintensity. His recognition of the value of the passions was to theman advocacy of disease in moderation: his admission of other elementsbesides virtue into the conception of happiness seemed to them to bea betrayal of the citadel, to say as he did that the exercise ofvirtue was the highest good was no merit in their eyes, unless itwere added to the confession that there was none beside it. TheStoics tried to treat man as a being of pure reason. The Peripateticswould not shut their eyes to his mixed nature, and contended that thegood of such a being must also be mixed, containing in it elementswhich had reference to the body and its environment. The goods of thesoul indeed, they said, far outweighed those of body and estate, butstill the latter had a right to be considered. 

Though the Stoics were religious to the point of superstition, yetthey did not invoke the terrors of theology to enforce the lesson ofvirtue. Plato does this even in the very work, the professed objectof which is to prove the _intrinsic_ superiority of justice toinjustice. But Chrysippus protested against Plato's procedure on thispoint, declaring that the talk about punishment by the gods was mere'bugaboo'. By the Stoics indeed, no less than by the Epicureans, fearof the gods was discarded from philosophy. The Epicurean gods took nopart in the affairs of men; the Stoic God was incapable of anger. 

The absence of any appeal to rewards and punishments was a naturalconsequence of the central tenet of the Stoic morality: that virtueis in itself the most desirable of all things. Another corollary thatflows with equal directness from the same principle is that is betterto be than to seem virtuous. Those who are sincerely convinced thathappiness is to be found in wealth or pleasure or power prefer thereality to the appearance of these goods; it must be the same withhim who is sincerely convinced that happiness lies in virtue. 

Despite the want of feeling in which the Stoics gloried, it is yettrue to say that the humanity of their system constitutes one of itsmost just claims on our admiration. They were the first fully torecognise the worth of man as man; they heralded the reign of peacefor which we are yet waiting; they proclaimed to the world thefatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; they were convinced ofthe solidarity of mankind, and laid down that the interest of onemust be subordinated to that of all. The word "philanthrop, " thoughnot unheard before their time, was brought into prominence by them asa name for a virtue among the virtues. 

Aristotle's ideal state, like the Republic of Plato, is still anHellenic city; Zeno was the first to dream of a republic which shouldembrace all mankind. In Plato's Republic all the material goods arecontemptuously thrown to the lower classes, all the mental andspiritual reserved for the higher. In Aristotle's ideal the bulk ofthe population are mere conditions, not integral parts of the state. Aristotle's callous acceptance of the existing fact of slaveryblinded his eyes to the wider outlook, which already in his time wasbeginning to be taken. His theories of the natural slave and of thenatural nobility of the Greeks are mere attempts to justify practice. In the Ethics there is indeed a recognition of the rights of man, butit is faint and grudging. Aristotle there tells us that a slave, as aman, admits of justice, and therefore of friendship, butunfortunately it is not this concession which is dominant in hissystem, but rather the reduction of a slave to a living tool by whichit is immediately preceded. In another passage Aristotle points outthat men, like other animals, have a natural affection for themembers of their own species, a fact, he adds, which is best seen intravelling. This incipient humanitarianism seems to have beendeveloped in a much more marked way by Aristotle's followers, but itis the Stoics who have won the glory of having initiated humanitariansentiment. 

Virtue, with the earlier Greek philosophers, was aristocratic andexclusive. Stoicism, like Christianity, threw it open to the meanestof mankind. In the kingdom of wisdom, as in the kingdom of Christ, there was neither barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free. The only truefreedom was to serve philosophy, or, which was the same thing, toserve God; and that could be done in any station in life. The solecondition of communion with gods and good men was the possession of acertain frame of mind, which might belong equally to a gentleman, toa freedman, or to a slave. In place of the arrogant assertion of thenatural nobility of the Greeks, we now hear that a good mind is thetrue nobility. Birth is of no importance; all are sprung from thegods. "The door of virtue is shut to no man; it is open to all, admits all, invites all--free men, freedmen, slaves, kings andexiles. Its election is not of family or fortune; it is content withthe bare man. " Wherever there was a human being, there Stoicism saw afield for well doing. Its followers were always to have in theirmouths and hearts the well-known line-- Homo sum humani nihil a me allenum puto

Closely connected with the humanitarianism of the Greeks is theircosmopolitanism. 

Cosmopolitanism is a word which has contracted rather than expandedin meaning with the advance of time. We mean by it freedom from theshackles of nationality. The Stoics meant this and more. The city ofwhich they claimed to be citizens was not merely this round world onwhich we dwell, but the universe at large with all the mighty lifetherein contained. In this city, the greatest of earth'scities--Rome, Ephesus or Alexandria, were but houses. To be exiledfrom one of them was only like changing your lodgings, and death buta removal from one quarter to another. The freemen of this city wereall rational beings--sages on earth and the stars in heaven. Such anidea was thoroughly in keeping with the soaring genius of Stoicism. It was proclaimed by Zeno in his Republic, and after him byChrysippus and his followers. It caught the imagination of alienwriters as of the author of the Peripatetic _De Mundo_ who waspossibly of Jewish origin and of Philo and St Paul who were certainlyso. Cicero does not fail to make of it on behalf of the Stoics;Seneca revels in it; Epictetus employs it for edification and MaucusAurelius finds solace in his heavenly citizenship for the cares of anearthly ruler--as Antoninus indeed his city is Rome, but as a man itis the universe. 

The philosophy of an age cannot perhaps be inferred from itspolitical conditions with that certainty which some writers assume;still there are cases in which the connection is obvious. On a wideview of the matter we may say that the opening up of the East by thearms of Alexander was the cause of the shifting of the philosophicstandpoint from Hellenism to cosmopolitanism. If we reflect that theCynic and Stoic teachers were mostly foreigners in Greece we shallfind a very tangible reason for the change of view. Greece had doneher work in educating the world and the world was beginning to makepayment in kind. Those who had been branded as natural slaves werenow giving laws to philosophy. The kingdom of wisdom was sufferingviolence at the hands of barbarians. 

DATES AND AUTHORITIES BCDeath of Socrates 399Death of Plato 347Zeno 347 275 Studied under Crates 325 Studied under Stilpo and Xenocrates 325 315 Began teaching 315Epicurus 341 270Death of Aristotle 322Death of Xenocrates 315Cleanthes succeeded Zeno 275Chrysippus died 207Zeno of Tarsus succeeded Chrysippus ---Decree of the Senate forbidding the teaching of philosophy at Rome 161Diogenes of BabylonEmbassy of the philosophers to Rome 155Antipater of TarsusPanaetius Accompanied Africanus on his mission to the East 143 His treatise on Propriety was the basis of Cicero's De Officiis. The Scipionic Circle at Rome The coterie was deeply tinctured with Stoicism. Its chief members were-- The younger Africanus the younger Laelius L. Furius Philus Manilius Spurius Mummius P. Rutillus Rufus Q. Aelius, Tubero Polybius and PanaetiusSuicide of Blossius of Cumae, the adviser of Tiberius Gracchus and a disciple of Antipater of Tarsus 130Mnesarchus, a disciple of Panaetius, was teaching at Athens when the orator Crassus visited that city 111Hecaton of Rhodes A great Stoic writer, a disciple of Panaetius and a friend of TuberoPosidonius About 128-44 Born at Apameia in Syria Became a citizen of Rhodes Represented the Rhodians at Rome 86 Cicero studied under him at Rhodes 78 Came to Rome again at an advanced age 51Cicero's philosophical works 54-44 These are a main authority for our knowledge of the Stoics. A. D. Philo of Alexandria came on an embassy to Rome 39 The works of Philo are saturated with Stoic ideas and he displays an exact acquaintance with their terminologySeneca Exiled to Corsica 41 Recalled from exile 49 Forced by Nero to commit suicide 65 His Moral Epistles and philosophical works generally are written from the Stoic standpoint though somewhat affected by EclecticismPlutarch Flor. 80 The Philosophical works of Plutarch which have most bearing upon the Stoics are-- De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute, De Virtute Morali, De Placitis Philosophorum, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere, De Communibus Notitiis. Epictetus Flor. 90 A freedman of Epaphroditus, Disciple of C Musonius Rufus, Lived and taught at Rome until A. D. 90 when the philosophers were expelled by Domitian. Then retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, where he spent the rest of his life. Epictetus wrote nothing himself, but his Dissertations, as preserved by Arrian, from which the Encheiridion is excerpted, contain the most pleasing presentation that we have of the moral philosophy of the Stoics. C Musonius Rufus Banished to Gyaros . . . 65 Returned to Rome . . . 68 Tried to intervene between the armies of Vitellius and Vespasian . . . 69 Procured the condemnation of Publius Celer (Tac H iv 10, Juv Sat iii 116) . . . --Q Junius Rusticus . . . Cos 162 Teacher of M Aurelius who learnt from him to appreciate Epictetus

M Aurelius Antoninus Emperor . . . 161-180 Wrote the book commonly called his "Meditations" under the title of "to himself" He may be considered the last of the Stoics

Three later authorities for the Stoic teaching are-- Diogenes Laertius . . . 200? Sextus Empiricus . . . 225? Stobaeus . . . 500?

Modern works-- Von Arnim's edition of the "Fragmenta Stoicorum Veterum" Pearson's "Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes" Pitt Press Remains of C Musonius Rufus in the Teubner series Zeller's "Stoics and Epicureans. " Sir Alexander Grant, "Ethics of Aristotle" Essay VI on the Ancient Stoics Lightfoot on the Philippians, Dissertation II, "St. Paul and Seneca. "