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33
Art
III.—The Stoics.
Die Philosophic der Griechen. Von Dr. Edward Zeller.
Dritter Theil, Erste Abtheilung. Leipzig : 1880.
HE systems of Plato and Aristotle were splendid digressions
from the main line of ancient speculation rather than stages
in its regular development. The philosophers who came after
them went back to an earlier tradition, and the influence of the
two greatest Hellenic masters, when it was felt at all, acted almost
entirely as a disturbing or deflecting force. The extraordinary
reach of their principles could not, in truth, be appreciated until
the organized experience of mankind had accumulated to an
extent requiring the application of new rules for its comprehen
sion and utilization; and to make such an accumulation possible
nothing less was needed than the combined efforts of the whole
western world. Such religious, educational, social, and political
reforms as those contemplated in Plato’s Republic, though
originally designed for a single city community, could not be
realized, even approximately, within a narrower field than that
offered by the mediaeval church and the feudal state. The ideal
theory first gained practical significance in connection with the
metaphysics of Christian theology. The place given by Plato
to mathematics has only been fully justified by the development
of modern science. So also Aristotle’s criticism became of
practical importance only when the dreams against which it was
directed had embodied themselves in a fabric of oppressive
superstition. Only the vast extension of reasoned knowledge
has enabled us to disentangle the vitally important elements of
Aristotle’s logic from the mass of useless refinements in which
they are embedded; his fourfold division of causes could not be
estimated rightly even by Bacon, Descartes, or Spinoza; while
his arrangement of the sciences, his remarks on classification, and
his contributions to comparative biology bring us up to the very
verge of theories whose first promulgation is still fresh in the
memories of men.
Again, the spiritualism taught by Plato and Aristotle alike—
by the disciple, indeed, with even more distinctness than by the
master—was so entirely inconsistent with the common belief of
antiquity as to remain a dead letter for nearly six centuries—that
is, until the time of Plotinus. The difference between body and
mind was recognized by every school, but only as the difference
between solid and gaseous matter is recognized by us ; while the
antithesis between conscious and unconscious existence, with all
T
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXL]—New Series, Vol. LXI. No. I.
C
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The Stoics.
its momentous consequences, was recognized by none. The ola
hypothesis had to be thoroughly thought out before its insuffi
ciency could be completely and irrevocably confessed.
Nor was this the only reason why the spiritualists lost touch
of their age. If in some respects they were far in advance of early
Greek thought, in other respects they were far behind it. Their
systems were pervaded by an unphilosophical dualism which
tended to undo much that had been achieved by their less pre
judiced predecessors. For this we have partly to blame their
environment. The opposition of God and the world, heaven
and earth, mind and matter, necessity and free-will, considered
as co-ordinate forces working within the same sphere, was a con
cession—though of course an unconscious concession—to the
stupid bigotry of Athens. Yet at the same time they had failed
to solve those psychological problems which had most interest
for an Athenian public. Instead of following up the attempt
made by the Sophists and Socrates to place morality on a
scientific foundation, they busied themselves with the construc
tion of a new machinery for diminishing the efficacy of tempta
tion or for strengthening the efficacy of law. To the question
What is the highest good ? Plato gave an answer which nobody
could understand, and Aristotle an answer which was almost
absolutely useless to anybody but himself. The other great
problem, What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge ? was left
in an equally unsatisfactory state. Plato never answered it at all;
Aristotle merely pointed out the negative conditions which must
be fulfilled by its solution.
It is not, then, surprising that the Academic and Peripetatic
schools utterly failed to carry on the great movement inaugurated
by their respective founders. The successors of Plato first lost
themselves in a labyrinth of Pythagorean mysticism, and then
sank into the position of mere moral instructors. It is outside
our present purpose to relate the history of that remarkable
revolution by which the Academy regained a foremost place in
Greek thought; but we may observe that this was done by
taking up and presenting in its original purity a tradition of
older date than Platonism, though presented under a new aspect
and mixed with other elements by Plato. The heirs of Aristotle,
after staggering on a few paces under the immense burden of
his encyclopaedic bequest, came to a dead halt, and contented
themselves with keeping the treasure safe until the time should
arrive for its appropriation and reinvestment by a stronger specu
lative race.
No sooner did the two imperial systems lose their ascendency
than the germs which they had temporarily overshadowed sprang
up into vigorous vitality, and fox' more than five centuries domi
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The Stoics.
nated the whole course not only of Greek but of European
thought. Of these by far the most important was the naturalistic
idea, the belief that physical science might be substituted for
religious superstitions and local conventions as an impregnable
basis of conduct. On a former occasion we endeavoured to
*
show that, while there are traces of this idea in the philo
sophy of Heracleitus, and while its roots stretch far back
into the literature and popular faith of Greece, it was formu
lated for the first time by the two great Sophists, Prodicus and
Hippias, who, in the momentous division between Nature and
Law, placed themselves—Hippias more particularly—on the side
of Nature. Two causes led to the temporary discredit of their
teaching. One was the perversion by which natural right became
the watchword of those who, like Plato’s Callicles, held that
nothing should stand between the strong man and the gratifi
cation of his desire for pleasure or for power. The other was the
keen criticism of the Humanists, the friends of social convention,
who held with Protagoras that Nature was unknowable, or with
Gorgias that she did not exist, or with Socrates that her laws
were the secret of the gods. It was in particular the over
whelming personal influence of Socrates which triumphed. He
drew away from the Sophists their strongest disciple, Antisthenes,
and convinced him that philosophy was valuable only in so far
as it became a life-renovating power, and that, viewed in this
light, it had no relation to anything outside ourselves. But just
as Socrates had discarded the physical speculations of former
teachers, so also did Antisthenes discard the dialectic which
Socrates had substituted for them, even to the extent of denying
that definition was possible. Yet he seems to have kept a firm
hold on the two great ideas that were the net result of all previous
philosophy, the idea. of a Cosmos, the common citizenship of
■which made all men potentially equal, and the idea of reason as
the essential prerogative of man.
Antisthenes pushed to its extreme consequences a movement
begun by the naturalistic Sophists. His doctrine was what would
now be called anarchic collectivism. The State, marriage, private
property, and the then accepted forms of religion, were to be
abolished, and all mankind were to herd promiscuously together.
Either he or his followers, alone among the ancients, declared
that slavery was wrong, and like Socrates, he held that the
virtue of men and women was the same. But what he meant
by this broad human virtue, which according to him was identical
with happiness, is not clear. We only know that he dissociated
* Westminster Review for April, 1880: Art. “The Greek Humanists :
Mature and Law.”
C2
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The Stoics.
it in the strongest manner from pleasure. “ I had rather be mad
than delighted/’ is one of his characteristic sayings. It would
appear, however, that what he really objected to was self-in
dulgence—the pursuit of sensual gratification for its own sake-—
and that he was ready to welcome the enjoyments naturally
accompanying the healthy discharge of vital function.
Antisthenes and his school, of which Diogenes is the most
popular and characteristic type, were afterwards known as
Cynics; but the name is never mentioned by Plato and Aristotle,
nor do they allude to the scurrility and systematic indecency
afterwards associated with it. The anecdotes relating to this
unsavoury subject should be received with extreme suspicion.
There has always been a tendency to believe that philosophers
carry out in practice what are vulgarly believed to be the logical
consequences of their theories. Thus it is related of Pyrrho the
Sceptic that when out walking he never turned aside to avoid any
obstacle or danger, and was only saved from destruction by the
vigilance of his friends. This is of course a silly fable ; and we
have Aristotle’s word for it that the Sceptics took as good care
of their lives as other people. In like manner we may conjecture
that the Cynics, advocating as they did a return to Nature and
defiance of prejudice, were falsely credited with what was falsely
supposed to be the practical exemplification of their precepts.
It is at any rate remarkable that Epictetus, a man not disposed
to undervalue the obligations of decorum, constantly refers to
Diogenes as a kind of philosophic saint, and that he describes
the ideal Cynic in words which would apply without alteration to
the character of a Christian apostle.
Cynicism, if we understand it rightly, was only the mutilated
form of an oldei' philosophy having for its object to set morality
free from convention, and to found it anew on a scientific know
ledge of natural law. The need of such a system was not felt
so long as Plato and Aristotle were unfolding their wonderful
schemes for a reorganization of action and belief. With the
temporary collapse of these schemes it came once more to the
front. The result was a new school which so thoroughly satisfied
the demands of the age, that for five centuries the noblest spirits
of Greece and Rome, with few exceptions, adhered to its doc
trines ; that in dying it bequeathed some of their most vital
■elements to the metaphysics and the theology by which it was
succeeded ; that with their decay it reappeared as an important
factor in modern thought; and that its name has become imperishably associated in our own language with the proud
endurance of suffering, the self-sufficiency of conscious rectitude,
and the renunciation of all sympathy, except what may be
derived from contemplation of the immortal dead, whose heroism
�The Stoics.
37
is recorded in history, or of the eternal cosmic forces working
out their glorious tasks with unimpassioned energy and imper
turbable repose.
One day, some few years after the death of Aristotle, a short
lean swarthy young man, of weak build, with clumsily shaped
limbs, and head inclined to one side, was standing in an Athenian
bookshop, intently studying a roll of manuscript. His name
was Zeno, and he was a native of Citium, a Greek colony in
Cyprus, where the Hellenic element had become adulterated
with a considerable Phoenician infusion. According to some
accounts, Zeno had come to the great centre of intellectual
activity to study, according to others for the sale of Tyrian
purple. At any rate the volume which he held in his hand
decided his vocation. It was the second book of Xenophon’s
Memoirs of Socrates. Zeno eagerly asked where such men as
he whose sayings stood recorded there were to be found. At
that moment the Cynic Crates happened to pass by. “ There
is one of them,” said the bookseller, “ follow him.”
The history of this Crates was distinguished by the one solitary
romance of Greek philosophy. A young lady of noble family,
named Hipparchia, fell desperately in love with him, refuse! 1
several most eligible suitors, and threatened to kill herself unless
she was given to him in marriage. Her parents in despair sent
for Crates. Marriage, for a philosopher, was against the prin
ciples of his sect, and he at first joined them in endeavouring to
dissuade her. Finding his remonstrances unavailing, he at last
flung at her feet the staff and wallet which constituted his whole
worldly possessions, exclaiming, “ Here is the bridegroom, and
that is the dower. Think of this matter well, for you cannot be
my partner unless you follow the same calling with me.” Hip
parchia consented, and thenceforth, heedless of taunts, conformed
her life in every respect to the Cynic pattern.
Zeno had more delicacy or less fortitude than Hipparchia; and
the very meagre intellectual fare provided by Crates must have
left his inquisitive mind unsatisfied. Accordingly we find him
leaving this rather disappointing substitute for Socrates to study
philosophy under Stilpo the Megarian dialectician and Polemo
the head of the Academy ; while we know that he must have
gone back to Heracleitus for the physical basis from which con
temporary speculation had by this time cut itself completely
free. At length, about the beginning of the third century B.C.,
Zeno, after having been a learner for twenty years, opened a
school on his own account. As if to mark the practical bearing
of his doctrine he chose one of the most frequented resorts in
the city for its promulgation. There was at Athens a portico
called the Poecile Stoa, adorned with frescoes by Polygnotus the
�38 •
The Stoics.
greatest painter of the Cimonian period. It was among the
monuments of that wonderful city, at once what the Loggia dei
Lanzi is to Florence, and what Raphael’s Stanze are to Rome;
while, like the Place de la Concorde in Paris, it was darkened
by the terrible associations of a revolutionary epoch. A century
before Zeno’s time fourteen hundred Athenian citizens had been
slaughtered under its colonnades by order of the Thirty. “ I
will purify the Stoa,” said the Cypriote stranger; and the feel
ings still associated with the word Stoicism prove how nobly his
promise was fulfilled.
How much of the complete system known in later times under
this name was due to Zeno himself, we do not know ; for nothing
but a few fragments of his and of his immediate successors’
writings is left. The idea of combining Antisthenes with Heracleitus, and both with Socrates, probably belongs to the founder
of the school. His successor, Cleanthes, a man of character
rather than of intellect, was content to hand on what the
master had taught. Then came another Cypriote, Chrysippus,
of whom we are told that without him the Stoa would not
have existed, so thoroughly did he work out the system in
all its details, and so strongly did he fortify its positions against
hostile criticism by a framework of elaborate dialectic. “ Give
me the propositions, and I will find the proofs 1” he used to say
to Cleanthes. After him, nothing of importance was added to
the doctrines of the school, although the spirit by which they
were animated seems to have undergone profound modifications,
in the lapse of ages.
In reality Stoicism was not, like the older Greek philosophers,
a creation of individual genius. It bears the character of a
compilation both on its first exposition and on its final
completion. Polemo, who had been a fine gentleman^before he
became a philosopher, taunted Zeno with filching his opinions
from every quarter, like the cunning little Phoenician trader that
he was. And it was said that the seven hundred treatises
of Chrysippus would be reduced to a blank if everything
that he had borrowed from others were to be erased. He seems
indeed, to have been the father of review-writers, and to have
used the reviewer’s right of transcription with more than
modern license. Nearly a whole tragedy of Euripides reappeared
in one of his “ articles,” and a wit on being asked what he was
reading, replied, the Medea of Chrysippus.”
In this respect, Stoicism betrays its descent from the encyclo
paedic .lectures of the earlier Sophists, particularly Hippias.
While professedly subordinating every other study to the art
of virtuous living, its professors seem to have either put a very
wide interpretation on virtue, or else to have raised its founda
�The Stoics.
39
tion to a most unnecessary height. They protested against
Aristotle’s glorification of knowledge as the supreme end, and
declared its exclusive pursuit to be merely a more refined form of
self-indulgence ; but, being Greeks, they shared the speculative
passion with him, and seized on any pretext that enabled them to
gratify it. And this inquisitiveness was apparently much
stronger in Asiatic Hellas, whence the Stoics were almost
entirely recruited, than in the old country where centuries
of intellectual activity had issued in a scepticism from which
their fresher minds revolted.
*
It is mentioned by Zeller as a
proof of exhaustion and comparative indifference to such
inquiries, that the Stoics should have fallen back upon their
physics on the Heracleitean philosophy. But all the ideas
respecting the constitution of Nature that were then possible had
already been put forward. The Greek capacity for discovery
was perhaps greater in the third century that at any former time ;
but from the very progress of science it was necessarily confined
to specialists such as Aristarchus of Samos, or Archimedes.
Anil if the Stoics made no original contributions to physical
science, they at least accepted what seemed at that time to be its
established results; here, as in other respects, offering a marked
contrast to the Epicurean school. If a Cleanthes assailed the
heliocentric hypothesis of Aristarchus on religious grounds, he
was treading in the footsteps of Aristotle. It was far more im
portant that he or his successors should have taught the true
theory of the earth’s shape, of the moon’s phases, of eclipses, and
of the relative size and distance of the heavenly bodies. On
this last subject, indeed, one of the later Stoics, Posidonius,
arrived at or accepted conclusions which, although falling far
short of the reality, approximated to it in a very remarkable
manner, when we consider what imperfect means of measurement
the Greek astronomers had at their disposition.!
In returning to one of the older cosmologies, the Stoics placed
themselves in opposition to the system of Aristotle as a whole,
although on questions of detail they frequently adopted his
conclusions. The object of Heracleitus, as against the Pythago
reans, had been to dissolve away every antithesis in a pervading
* It is significant that the only Stoic who fell back on pure Cynicism should
have been Aristo of Chios, a genuine Greek, while the only one who, like
Aristotle, identified good with knowledge was Herillus, a Carthaginian.
f Posidonius estimated the sun’s distance from the earth at 500,000,000 r
stades, and the moon’s distance at 2,000,000 stades, which, counting the stade
at 200 yards, gives about 57,000,000 and 227,000 miles respectively. The
sun’s diameter he reckoned, according to one account, at 410,000 miles, about
half the real amount; according to another account at a quarter less. Zeller,
Th. d. Gr., iii. 1, p. 190, Note 2.
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The Stoics.
unity of contradictories, and, as against the Eleatics, to substitute
an eternal series of transformations for the changeless unity of
absolute existence. The Stoics now applied the same method on
a scale proportional to the subsequent development of thought.
Aristotle had carefully distinguished God from the world,
even to the extent of isolating him from all share in its creation,
and interest in its affairs. The Stoics declared that God and the
world were one. So far, it is allowable to call them pantheists.
Yet their pantheism was very different from what we are accus
tomed to denote by that name, from the system of Spinoza, for
example. Their strong faith in final causes and in Providence—
a faith in which they closely followed Socrates—would be hardly
consistent with the denial of a consciousness to the Supreme Being,
quite distinct from the human consciousness with which it is
identified by some modern philosophers. Their God was some
times described as the soul of the world, the fiery element
surrounding and penetrating every other kind of matter. What
remained was the body of God ; but it was a body which he had
originally created out of his own substance, and would, in the
fulness of time, absorb into that substance again. Thus they keep
the future conflagration foretold by Heracleitus, but gave it a more
religious colouring. The process of creation was then to begin
over again, and all things were to run the same course as
before down to the minutest particulars, human history repeating
itself, and the same persons returning to live the same lives once
more. Such a belief of course involved the most rigid fatalism :
and here again their doctrine offers a pointed contrast to that of
Aristotle. The Stagirite, differing, as it would seem in this
respect from all the older physicists, maintained that there was an
element of chance and spontaneity in the sublunary sphere;
and without going very deeply into the mechanism of motives or
the theory of moral responsibility, he had claimed a similar
indeterminateness for the human will. Stoicism would hear of
neither ; with it, as with modern science, the chain of causation
is unbroken from first to last, and extends to all phenomena
alike. The old theological notion of an omnipotent divine will,
or of a destiny superior even to that will, was at once confirmed
and continued by the new theory of natural law, just as the
predestination of the Reformers reappeared in the metaphysical
rationalism of Spinoza.
*
* The Stoic necessarianism gave occasion to a repartee which has remained
classical even since, although its original authorship is known to few. A slave
of Zeno’s having been detected in some offence, tried to excuse himself by
quoting his master’s principle that he was fated to commit it. “ And I was
fated to chastise you,” calmly replied the philosopher, immediately suiting the
action to the words.
�The Stoics.
41
This dogma of universal determinism was combined in the
Stoical system with an equally outspoken materialism. The
capacity for either acting or being acted on was, according to
Plato, the one convincing evidence of real existence ; and he had
endeavoured to prove that there is such a thing as mind apart
from matter by its possession of this characteristic mark. The
Stoics simply reversed his argument. Whatever acts or is
acted on, they said, must be corporeal; therefore the soul is a
kind of body. Here they only followed the common opinion
of all philosophers who believed in an external world, except
Plato and Aristotle, while to a certain extent anticipating the
scientific automatism first taught in modern times by Spinoza,
and simultaneously revived by various thinkers in our own day.
To a certain extent only; for they did not recognize the inde
pendent reality of a consciousness in which the mechanical
processes are either reflected, or represented under a different
aspect. And they further gave their theory a somewhat
grotesque expression by interpreting those qualities and attri
butes of things, which other materialists have been content to
consider as belonging to matter, as themselves actual bodies.
For instance, the virtues and vices were, according to them, somany gaseous currents by which the soul is penetrated and
shaped—a materialistic rendering of Plato’s theory that qualities
are distinct and independent substances.
We must mention as an additional point of contrast between
the Stoics and the subsequent schools which they most resembled,
that while these look on the soul as inseparable from the body,
and sharing its fortunes from first to last, although perfectly
distinct from it in idea, they emphasized the antithesis between
the two just as strongly as Plato, giving the soul an absolutely in
finite power of self-assertion during our mortal life, and allowing
it a continued, though not an immortal, existence after death.
What has been said of the human soul applies equally to God,
who is the soul of the world. He also is conceived under the
form of a material, but very subtle and all-penetrating, element
to which our souls are much more closely akin than to the coarse
clay with which they are temporarily associated. And it was
natural that the heavenly bodies, in whose composition the
ethereal element seemed so visibly to predominate, should pass
with the Stoics, as with Plato and Aristotle, for conscious beings
inferior only in sacredness and majesty to the Supreme Ruler of
all. Thus, the philosophy which we are studying helps to prove
the strength and endurance of the religious reaction to which
Socrates first gave an argumentative expression, and by which
he was ultimately hurried to his doom. We may even trace
its increasing ascendency through the successive stages of the
�42
The Stoics.
Naturalistic school. Prodicus simply identified the gods of poly
theism with unconscious physical forces ; Antisthenes, while dis
*
carding local worship, believed, like Rousseau, in the existence
of a single deity ; Zeno, or his successors, revived the whole
pantheon, but associated it with a pure morality, and explained
away its more offensive features by an elaborate system of alle
gorical interpretation.
It was not, however, by its legendary beliefs that the living
power of ancient religion was displayed, but by the study and
practice of divination. This was to the Greeks and Romans
what priestly direction is to a Catholic, or the interpretation of
scripture texts to a Protestant believer. And the Stoics, in their
anxiety to uphold religion as a bulwark of morality, went
entirely along with the popular superstition; while at the same
time they endeavoured to reconcile it with the universality of
natural law by the same clumsily rationalistic methods that have
found favour with some modern scientific defenders of the mira
culous. The signs by which we are enabled to predict an event
entered, they said, equally with the event itself into the order of
Nature, being either connected with it by direct causation, as is
the configuration of the heavenly bodies at a man’s birth with
his after fortunes, or determined from the beginning of the
world to precede it according to an invariable rule, as with the
indications derived from inspecting the entrails of sacrificial
victims. And when sceptics asked of what use was the pre
monitory sign when everything was predestined, they replied
that our behaviour in view of the warning wras predestined as well.
To us the religion of the Stoics is interesting chiefly as a part
of the machinery by which they attempted to make good the
connection between natural and moral law, assumed rather than
proved by their Sophistic and Cynic precursors. But before
proceeding to this branch of the subject we must glance at their
mode of conceiving another side of the fundamental relationship
between man and the universe. This is logic in its widest sense,
so understood as to include an account of the process by which
we get our knowledge and the ultimate evidence of its reality
no less than the laws of formal ratiocination.
In their theory of cognition the Stoics chiefly followed Aristotle;
only with them the doctrine of empiricism is enunciated so dis
tinctly as to be placed beyond the reach of misinterpretation.
The mind is at first a tabula rasa and all our ideas are derived
exclusively from the senses. But while knowledge as a whole
rests on sense, the validity of each particular sense-perception
must be determined by an appeal to reason, in other words, to
* Sextus Empiricus, p. 5b2, 18. F.
�The Stoics.
43
the totality of our acquired experience. So also the first
principles of reasoning are not to be postulated, with Aristotle,
as immediately and unconditionally certain ; they are to be
assumed as hypothetically true and gradually tested by the
consequences deducible from them. Both principles well illus
trate the synthetic method of the Stoics—their habit of bringing
into close connection whatever Aristotle had studiously held
apart. And we must maintain, in opposition to the German
critics, that their method marks a real advance on his. It
ought at any rate to find more favour with the experiential
school of modern science, with those who hold that the highest
mathematical and physical laws are proved, not by the im
possibility of conceiving their contradictories, but by their close
agreement with all the facts accessible to our observation.
It was a consequence of the principle just stated that in formal
logic the Stoics should give precedence to the hypothetical over
the categorical syllogism. From one point of view their prefer
ence for this mode of stating an argument was an advance on
the method of Aristotle, whose reasonings, if explicitly set out,
would have assumed the form of disjunctive syllogisms. From
another point of view it was a return to the older dialectics of
Socrates and Plato, who always looked on their major premises
as possessing only a conditional validity—conditional, that is to
say, on the consent of their interlocutor. We have further to
note that both the disjunctive and the hypothetical syllogism
were first recognised as such by the Stoics; a discovery connected
with the feature which most profoundly distinguishes their logic
from Aristotle’s logic. We showed, in dealing with the latter, that
it is based on an analysis of the concept, and that all its imper
fections are due to that single circumstance. It was the Stoics
who first brought judgment, so fatally neglected by the author
of the Analytics, into proper prominence. Having once grasped
propositions as the beginning and end of reasoning, they naturally
and under' the guidance of common language, passed from simple
to complex assertions, and immediately detected the arguments
to which these latter serve as a foundation. And if we proceed
to ask why they were more interested in judgment than in con
ception, we shall probably find the explanation to be that their
philosophy had its root in the ethical and practical interests
which involve a continual process of injunction and belief, that
is to say, a continual association of such disparate notions as an
impression and an action; while the Aristotelian philosophy,
being ultimately derived from early Greek thought, had for its
leading principle the circumscription of external objects and
their reproduction under the form of an abstract classification.
Thus the naturalistic system, starting with the application of
�44
The Stoics.
scientific ideas to human life, ultimately carried back into science
the vital idea of Law, that is, of fixed relations subsisting between
disparate phenomena, and of knowledge as the subsumption of
less general under more general relations.
Under the guidance of a somewhat similar principle the Stoic
logicians attempted a reform of Aristotle’s categories. These
they reduced to four : Substance, Quality, Disposition, and Rela
tion (to V7rOKEt/LL£VOV, TO 7TOIOV, TO 7TMC ^X0VJ an(l ™ 7TjOdf Tl 7TWC
e\ov* ; and the change was an improvement in so far as it intro
)
duced a certain method and subordination where none existed
before ; for each category implies, and is contained in, its pre
decessor ; whereas the only order traceable in Aristotle’s cate
gories refers to the comparative frequency of the questions to
which they correspond.
With the idea of subsumption and subordination to law, we
pass at once to the Stoic ethics. For Zeno, the end of life was
self-consistency; for Cleanthes, consistency with Nature; for
Chrysippus, both the one and the other. The still surviving
individualism of the Cynics is represented in the first of these
principles; the religious inspiration of the Stoa in the second;
and the comprehensiveness of its great systematizing intellect
in the last On the other hand there is a vagueness about the
idea of self-consistency which seems to date from a time when
Stoicism was less a new and exclusive school than an endeavour
to appropriate whatever was best in the older schools. For to
be consistent is the common ideal of all philosophy, and is just
what distinguishes it from the uncalculating impulsiveness of
ordinary life, the chance inspirations of ordinary thought. But
the Peripatetic who chose knowledge as his highest good differed
widely from the Hedonist who made pleasure or painlessness his
end; and even if they agreed in thinking that the highest
pleasure is yielded by knowledge, the Stoic himself would assert
that the object of their common pursuit was with both alike
essentially unmoral. He would, no doubt, maintain that the
self-consistency of any theory but his own was a delusion, and
that all false moralities would, if consistently acted out, inevitably
land their professors in a contradiction.^ Yet the absence of
contradiction, although a valuable verification, is too negative a
mark to serve for the solo test of rightness ; and thus we are
led on to the more specific standard of conformability to Nature,
whether our own or that of the universe as a whole. Here again
* Zeller, p. 93.
4 “ Quid est sapientia ? Semper idem velle atque idem nolle. Licet illam
exceptiunculam non adjicias ut rectum sit quod velis. Non potest cuiquam
semper idem placere nisi rectum.” Seneca: T^nX.xx. 4.
�The Stoics.
45
a difficulty presentsitself. The idea of Nature had taken such a
powerful hold on the Greek mind that it was employed by every
school in turn,—except perhaps by the extreme sceptics, still
faithful to the traditions of Protagoras and Gorgias,—and was
confidently appealed to in support of the most divergent ethical
systems. We find it occupying a prominent place both in Plato’s
Laws and in Aristotle’s Politics; while the maxim, Follow
Nature, was borrowed by Zeno himself from Polemo the head
of the Academy, or perhaps from Polemo’s predecessor,
Xenocrates. And Epicurus, the great opponent of Stoicism,
maintained, not without plausibility, that every animal is led
by nature to pursue its own pleasure in preference to any other
end. Thus, when Cleanthes declared that pleasure was un
natural, he and the Epicureans could not have been talking
about the same thing. They must have meant something
different by pleasure or by nature or by both.
The last alternative seems the most probable. Nature
with the Stoics was a fixed objective order whereby all things
work together as co-operant parts of a single system. Each has
a certain office to perform, and the perfect performance of it is
the creature’s virtue, or reason, or highest good ; these three ex
pressions being always used as strictly synonymous terms. Here
we have the teleology, the dialectics, and the utilitarianism of
Socrates so worked out and assimilated, that they differ only as
various aspects of a single truth. The three lines of Socratic
teaching had also been drawn to a single point by Plato; but
his idealism had necessitated the creation of a new world for
their development and concentration. The idea of Nature as it
had grown up under the hands of Heracleitus, the Sophists, and
Antisthenes, supplied Zeno with a ready-made mould into which
his reforming aspirations could be run. The true Republic was
not a pattern laid up in heaven, nor was it restricted to the
narrow dimensions of a single Hellenic state. It was the whole
real universe in every part of which except in the works of
wicked men a divine law was recognized and obeyed. Nay,
according to Cleanthes, God’s law is obeyed even by the wicked,
and the essence of morality consists only in its voluntary fulfil
ment. As others very vividly put it, we are like a dog tied
under a cart, if we do not choose to run we shall be dragged
*
along.
It will now be better understood whence arose the hostility of
the Stoics to pleasure, and how they could speak of it in what
seems to us such a paradoxical style. It was subjective feeling
as opposed to objective law ; it was relative, particular, and
* Zeller, p. 168, note 2.
�46
The Stoics.
individual, as opposed to their formal standard of right ; and it
was continually drawing men away from their true nature by
*
acting as a temptation to vice. Thus, probably for the last
reason, Cleanthes could speak of pleasure as contrary to Nature^
while less rigorous authorities regarded it as absolutely in
different, being a consequence of natural actions, not an essential
element in their performance. And when their opponents pointed
to the universal desire for pleasure as a proof that it was the
natural end of animated beings, the Stoics answered that what
Nature had in view was not pleasure at all, but the preservation
of life itself.
*
Such an interpretation of instinct introduces us to a new prin
ciple—self-interest ; and this was, in fact, recognized on all hands
as the foundation of right conduct; it was about the question, What
is our interest ? that the ancient moralists were disagreed. The
Cynics apparently held that, for every being, simple existence is
the only good, and therefore with them virtue meant limiting
oneself to the bare necessaries of life ; while by following Nature
they meant reducing existence to its lowest terms, and assimi
lating our actions so far as possible to those of the lower animals,
plants, or even stones, all of which require no more than to main
tain the integrity of their proper nature.
Where the Cynics left off the Stoics began. Recognizing
simple self-preservation as the earliest interest and duty of man,
they held that his ultimate and highest good was complete self
realization, the development of that rational, social, and beneficent
nature which distinguishes him from the lower animals. Here
their teleological religion came in as a valuable sanction for their
ethics. Epictetus, probably following older authorities, argues
that self-love has purposely been made identical with sociability.
“ The nature of an animal is to do all things for its own sake.
Accordingly God has so ordered the nature of the rational animal
that it cannot obtain any particular good without at the same
time contributing to the common good. Because it is self
seeking it is not therefore unsocial.”! But if our happiness de
pends on external goods, then we shall begin to fight with one
another for their possession ;! friends, father, country, the gods
themselves, everything will, with good reason, be sacrificed to
their attainment. And, regarding this as a self-evident absurdity,
Epictetus concludes that our happiness must consist solely in a
righteous will, which we know to have been the doctrine of
his whole school.
We have now reached the great point on which the Stoic
ethics differed from that of Plato and Aristotle. The two latter,
while upholding virtue as the highest good, allowed external
* Diogenes Laertius, vii. 85.
f Dissert. I. xix. 11.
J Ibid. xxii. 9, ff.
�The Stoics.
47
advantages like pleasure and exemption from pain to enter into
their definition of perfect happiness; nor yet did they demand
the entire suppression of passion, but, on the contrary, assigned
to it a certain part in the formation of character. We must add,
although it was not a point insisted on by the ancient critics,
that they did not bring out the socially beneficent character of
virtue with anything like the distinctness of their successors.
The Stoics, on the other hand, refused to admit that there was
any good but a virtuous will, or that any useful purpose could be
served by irrational feeling. If the passions agree with virtue
they are superfluous, if they are opposed to it they are mis
chievous ; and once we give them the rein they are more likely
to disagree with than to obey it. The severer school had more
reason on their side than is commonly admitted. Either there
is no such thing as duty at all, or duty must be paramount over
every other motive—that is to say, a perfect man will discharge
his obligations at the sacrifice of every personal advantage.
There is no pleasure that he will not renounce, no pain that he
will not endure, rather than leave them unfulfilled. But to
assume this supremacy over his will, duty must be incommen
surable with any other motive; if it is a good at all, it must be
the only good. To identify virtue with happiness seems to
us absurd, because we are accustomed to associate it exclu
sively with those dispositions which are the cause of happiness
in others, or altruism; and happiness itself with pleasure
or the absence of pain, which are states of feeling necessarily,
conceived as egoistic. But neither the Stoics nor any other ancient
moralists recognized such a distinction ; all agreed that public
and private interest must somehow be identical, the only question
being should one be merged in the other, and if so, which ? or
should there be an illogical compromise between the two. The
alternative chosen by Zeno was incomparably nobler than the
system of Epicurus, while it was more consistent than those of
Plato and Aristotle. He regarded right conduct exclusively in
the light of those universal interests with which alone it is
properly concerned ; and if he appealed to the motives supplied
by personal happiness, this was a confusion of phraseology rather
than of thought.
The treatment of the passions by the Stoic school presents
greater difficulties, due partly to their own vacillation, partly to
the very indefinite nature of the feelings in question. It will be
admitted that here also the claims of duty are supreme. To
follow the promptings of fear or of anger, of pity or of love,
without considering the ulterior consequences of our action, is,
of course, wrong. For even if, in any particular instance, no
harm comes of the concession, we cannot be sure that such will
always be the case, and meanwhile the passion is strengthened
�48
The Stoics.
by indulgence. And we have also to consider the bad effect
produced on the character of those who, finding themselves the
object of passion, learn to address themselves to it instead of to
reason. Difficulties arise when we begin to consider how far
education should aim at the systematic discouragement of strong
emotion. Here the Stoics seem to have taken up a position not
very consistent either with their appeals to Nature or with their
teleological assumptions. Nothing strikes one as more unnatural
than the complete absence of human feeling ; and a believer in
design might plausibly maintain that every emotion conduced to
the preservation either of the individual or of the race. We find,
however, that the Stoics, here as elsewhere reversing the Aris
totelian method, would not admit the existence of a psychological
distinction between reason and passion. According to their
analysis, the emotions are so many different forms of judgment.
Joy and sorrow are false opinions respecting good and evil in the
present: desire and fear, false opinions respecting good and evil
in the future. But, granting a righteous will to be the only good,
and its absence the only evil, there can be no room for any of
these feelings in the mind of a truly virtuous man, since his
opinions on the subject of good are correct, and its possession
depends entirely on himself. Everything else arises from an
external necessity, to strive with which would be useless because
it is inevitable, and impious because it is supremely wise.
It will be seen that the Stoics condemned passion not as the
cause of immoral actions but as instrinsically vicious in itself.
Hence their censure extended to the rapturous delight and
passionate grief which seem entirely out of relation to conduct
properly so called. This was equivalent to saying that the will
has complete control over emotion; a doctrine which our philoso
phers did not shrink from maintaining. It might have been
supposed that a position which the most extreme supporters of
free-will would hardly accept, would find still less favour with an
avowedly necessarian school. And to regard the emotions as
either themselves beliefs, or as inevitably caused by beliefs, would
seeni to remove them even farther from the sphere of moral
responsibility. The Stoics, however, having arrived at the per
fectly true doctrine that judgment is a form of volition, seem to
have immediately invested it with the old associations of free
choice which they were at the same time busily engaged in
stripping off from its other forms. They took up the Socratic
paradox that virtue is knowledge; but they would not agree
with Socrates that it could be instilled by force of argument. To
them vice was not so much ignorance as the obstinate refusal to
be convinced.
*
* Zeller, p. 229.
�49
The Stoics.
The Stoic arguments are, indeed, when we come to analyse
them, appeals to authority rather than to the logical understand
ing. We are told again and again that the common objects of
desire and dread cannot really be good or evil, because they
are not altogether under our control. And if we ask why this
necessarily excludes them from the class of things to be pursued
or avoided, the answer is that man, having been created for
perfect happiness, must also have been created with the power
to secure it by his own unaided exertions. But, even granting
the very doubtful thesis that there is any ascertainable purpose
in creation at all, it is hard to see how the Stoics could have
answered any one who chose to maintain that man is created for
enjoyment; since, judging by experience, he has secured a larger
share of it than of virtue, and is just as capable of gaining it by a
mere exercise of volition. For the professors of the Porch fully
admitted that their ideal sage had never been realized, which,
with their opinions about their indivisibility of virtue, was equiva
lent to saying that there never had been such a thing as a good
man at all. Or, putting the same paradox into other words,
since the two classes of wise and foolish divide humanity between
them, and since the former class has only an ideal existence, they
were obliged to admit that mankind are not merely most of
them fools, but all fools. And this, as Plutarch has pointed out
in his very clever attack on Stoicism, is equivalent to saying
that the scheme of creation is a complete failure.
*
The inconsistencies of a great philosophical system are best
explained by examining its historical antecedents. We have
already attempted to disentangle the roots from which Stoicism
was nourished, but one of them has not yet been taken into
account. This was the still continued influence of Parmenides,
derived, if not from his original teaching, then from some
one or more of the altered shapes through which it had passed.
It has been shown how Zeno used the Heracleitean method
to break down all the demarcations laboriously built up by
Plato and Aristotle. Spirit was identified with matter; ideas
with aerial currents ; God with the world; rational with sensible
evidence; volition with judgment; and emotion with thought.
But the idea of a fundamental antithesis, expelled from every
other department of inquiry, took hold with all the more energy
on what, to Stoicism, was the most vital of all distinctions—that
between right and wrong. Once grasp this transformation of a
metaphysical into a moral principle, and every paradox of the
system will be seen to follow from it with logical necessity.
What the supreme Idea had been to Plato and self-thinking
* Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis, cap. xxxiii. p. 1076 B.
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXI.]—New Series, Vol. LX1. No. I.
D
�50
The Stoics.
thought to Aristotle, that virtue became to the new school
*
simple, unchangeable, and self-sufficient. It must not only be
independent of pleasure and pain, but absolutely incommensurable
■with them; therefore there can be no happiness but what it
gives. As an indivisible unity, it must be possessed entirely or
not at all; and, being eternal, once possessed it can never be
lost. Further, since the same action may be either right or
wrong, according to the motive of its performance, virtue is
nothing external, but a subjective disposition, a state of the will
and the affections; or, if these are to be considered as judgments,
a state of the reason. Finally, since the universe is organized
reason, virtue must be natural, and especially consonant to the
nature of man as a rational animal; while, at the same time, its
existence in absolute purity being inconsistent with experience,
it must remain an unattainable ideal.
It has been shown in former studies how Greek philosophy,
after straining an antithesis to the utmost, was driven by the
very law of its being to close or bridge over the chasm by a series
of accommodations and transitions. To this rule Stoicism was
no exception; and perhaps its extraordinary vitality may have
been partly due to the necessity imposed on its professors of
continually reviewing their positions, with a view to softening
down its most repellent features. We proceed to sketch in
rapid outline the chief artifices employed for that purpose.
The doctrine, in its very earliest form, had left a large neutral
ground between good and evil, comprehending almost all the
common objects of desire and avoidance. These the Stoics
now proceeded to divide according to a similar principle of
arrangement. Whatever, without being morally good in the
strictest sense, was either conducive to morality, or conformable
to human nature, or both, they called preferable. Under this
head came personal advantages, such as mental accomplishments,
beauty, health, strength, and life itself; together with external
advantages, such as wealth, honour, and high connections. The
opposite to preferable things they called objectionable; and
what lay between the two, such as the particular coin selected to
make a payment with, absolutely indifferent.
*
The thorough-going condemnation of passion was explained
away to a certain extent by allowing the sage himself to feel a
slight touch of the feelings which fail to shake his determination,
like a scar remaining after the wound is healed; and by
admitting the desirability of sundry emotions, which, though
carefully distinguished from the passions, seem to have differed
from them in degree rather than in kind.t
In like manner, the peremptory alternative between consum
* Zeller, pp. 260-1.
+ Ibid. pp. 267-8.
�51
The Stoics.
mate wisdom and utter folly was softened down by admitting
the possibility of a gradual progress from one to the other, itself
subdivided into a number of more or less advanced grades,
recalling Aristotle's idea of motion as a link between Privation
and Form.
*
It was not, however, in any of these concessions that the Stoics
found from first to last their,most efficient solution for the diffi
culties of practical experience, but in the countenance they ex
tended to an act which, more than any other, might have seemed
fatally inconsistent both in spirit and in letter with their whole
system, whether we, choose to call it a defiance of divine law, a
reversal of natural instinct, a selfish abandonment of duty, or a
cowardly shrinking from pain. We allude, of course, to their
habitual recommendation of suicide. “ If you are not satisfied with
life," they said, “ you have only got to rise and depart; the door is
always open." Various circumstances were specified in which the
sage would exercise the privilege of “ taking himself off/’ as they
euphemistically expressed it. Severe pain, mutilation, incurable
disease, advanced old age, the hopelessness of escaping from ty
ranny, and in general any hindrance to leading a “natural” life
were held to be a sufficient justification for such a step. The first
founders of the school set an example afterwards frequently fol
lowed. Zeno is said to have hanged himself for no better reason
than that he fell and broke his finger through the weakness of old
age; and Cleanthes, having been ordered to abstain temporarily
from food,' resolved, as he expressed it, not to turn back after
going half way to death. This side of the Stoic doctrine found
particular favour in Rome, and the voluntary death of Cato was
always spoken of as his chief title to fame. Many noble spirits
were sustained in their defiance of the imperial despotism by
the thought that there was one last liberty of which not even
Caesar could deprive them. Objections were silenced by the
argument that, life not being an absolute good, its loss might
fairly be preferred to some relatively greater inconvenience.
But why the sage should renounce an existence where perfect
happiness depends entirely on his own will neither was, nor could
be, explained.
If now, abandoning all technicalities, we endeavour to estimate
the significance and value of the most general ideas contributed
by Stoicism to ethical speculation, we shall find that they may be
most conveniently considered under the following heads. First
of all, the Stoics made morality completely inward. They
declared that the intention was equivalent to the deed, and that
the wish was equivalent to the intention—a view which has been
* Zeller, p. 270.
D 2
�52
The Stoics.
made familiar to all by the teaching of the Gospel, but whose
origin in Greek philosophy has been strangely ignored even by
rationalistic writers.
*
From the inaccessibility of motives and
feelings to direct external observation, it follows that each man
must be, in the last resort, his own judge. Hence the notion of
conscience is equally a Stoic creation. That we have a mystical
intuition informing us, prior to experience, of the difference
between right and wrong, was, indeed, a theory quite alien to
their empirical derivation of knowledge. But that the educated
wrongdoer carries in his bosom a perpetual witness and avenger
of his guilt, they most distinctly asserted.f The difference
between ancient and modern tragedy is alone sufficient to
prove the novelty and power of this idea; for that the Eumenides do not represent even the germ of a conscience, it would
now be waste of words to show. On the other hand, the falli
bility of conscience and the extent to which it may be sophisti
cated were topics not embraced within the limits of Stoicism,
and perhaps never adequately illustrated by any writer, even in
modern times, except the great English novelist whose loss we
still deplore.
The second Stoic idea to which we would invite attention is
that, in the economy of life, every one has a certain function to
fulfil, a certain part to play, which is marked out for him by
circumstances beyond his control, but in the adequate perform
ance of which his duty and dignity are peculiarly involved. It
is true that this idea finds no assignable place in the teaching of
the earliest Stoics, or rather in the few fragments of their
teaching which alone have been preserved; but it is already
touched upon by Cicero in a work avowedly adapted from
Pansetius, who flourished more than a century B C.; it frequently
recurs in the lectures of Epictetus; and is enunciated with
energetic concision in the solitary meditations of Marcus
Aurelius.I The belief spoken of is, indeed, closely connected
with the Stoic teleology, and only applies to the sphere of free
intelligence a principle like that supposed to regulate the
activity of inanimate or irrational beings. If every mineral,
every plant, and every animal has its special use and office, so
also must we, according to the capacity of our individual and
* “ Omnia scelera, et.iam ante effectum operis, quantum culpae satis est, perfecta sunt.”—Seneca, De Const. Sap. vii. 4.
t “ Prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus est ... . sacer intra nos spiritus
sedet bonorum malorumque nostrorum observator et custos.”—Seneca, Epp.
xli. 1.
f Cicero, De Off. I. 31; Epictetus, Man. 17, ib. 30; Diss. I. ii. 33, xvi.
20, xxix. 39, II. v. 10, ib. 21, x. 4, xiv. 8, xxiii. 38, xxv. 22; Antoninus,
Comm. VI. 39, 43, IX. 29; cf. Seneca,
Ixxxv. 54.
�The Stoics.
53
determinate existence. By accomplishing the work thus im
posed on us, we fulfil the purpose of our vocation, we have done
all that the highest morality demands, and may with a clear
conscience leave the rest to fate. To put the same idea into
somewhat different terms : we are born into certain relationships,
domestic, social, and political, by which the lines of our daily
duties are prescribed with little latitude for personal choice.
The implications of such an ethical standard are, on the whole,
conservative ; it is assumed that social institutions are, taking
them altogether, nearly the best possible at any moment; and
that our truest' wisdom is to make the most of them, instead of
sighing for some other sphere where our grand aspirations or
volcanic passions might find a readier outlet for their feverish
activity. And if the teaching of the first Stoics did not take
the direction here indicated, it was because they, with the com
munistic theories inherited from their Cynic predecessors, began
by condemning all existing social distinctions as irrational. They
wished to abolish local religion, property, the family, and the
State, as a substitute for which the whole human race was to
be united under a single government, without private possessions
or slaves, and with a complete community of women and
children. It must, however, have gradually dawned on them
that such a radical subversion of the present system was hardly
compatible with their belief in the providential origin of all
things ; and that, besides this, the virtues which they made it so
much their object to recommend would be, for the most part,
superfluous in a communistic society. At the same time, the old
motion of Sophrosyne as a virtue which consisted in minding
one’s own business, or, stated more generally, in discerning and
doing whatever work one is best fitted for, would continue to
influence ethical teaching, with the effect of giving more and
more individuality to the definition of duty. And the Stoic
idea of a perfect sage, including as it did the possession of every
accomplishment and an exclusive fitness for discharging every
honourable function, would seem much less chimerical if inter
preted to mean that a noble character, while everywhere in
trinsically the same, might be realized under as many divergen
forms as there are opportunities for continuous usefulness in
*
life.
We can understand, then, why the philosophy which, when
first promulgated, had tended to withdraw its adherents from
participation in public life, should, when transplanted to Roman
* It need hardly be observed that here also the morality of natural law lias
attained its highest artistic development under the hand of George Eliot—
sometimes even to the neglect of purely artistic effect, as in Daniel Deronda
and the Spanish Gypsy.
�51
The Stoics.
soil, have become associated with an energetic interest in politics ;
why it was so eagerly embraced by those noble statesmen who
fought to the death in defence of their ancient liberties ; how it
could become the cement of a republican opposition under the
worst Caesars; how it could be the pride and support of Rome's
Prime Minister during that quinquennium JTeronis which was
the one bright episode in more than half a century of shame
and terror ; how, finally, it could mount the throne with Marcus
Aurelius, and prove, through his example, that the world’s work
might be most faithfully performed by one in whose meditations
mere worldly interests occupied the smallest space. Nor can we
agree with Zeller in thinking that it was the nationality, and not
the philosophy, of these disciples which made them such efficient
*
statesmen.
On the contrary, it seems to us that the “ Roman
ism” of these men was inseparable from their philosophy, and that
they were all the more Roman because they were Stoics as well.
The third great idea of Stoicism was its doctrine of humanity.
Men are all children of one Father, and citizens of one State;
the highest moral law is, Follow Nature, and (Nature has made
them to be social and to love one another ; the private interest
of each is, or should be, identified with the universal interest;
we should live for others that we may live for ourselves; even to
our enemies we should show love and not anger; the unnatural
ness of passion is shown by nothing more clearly than by its anti
social and destructive tendencies. Here, also, the three great Stoics
of the Roman empire—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—
rather than the founders of the school, must be our authorities,f
whether it be because their lessons correspond to a more deve
loped state of thought, or simply because they have been more
perfectly preserved. The former explanation is perhaps the
more generally accepted. There seems, however, good reason for
believing that the idea of universal love—the highest of all
philosophical ideas next to that of the universe itself—dates
further back than is commonly supposed. It can hardly be due
* Zeller, p. 297, followed by Mr. Capes, in his excellent little work on
Stoicism.
t Seneca, De Trd, I. v. 2 ff., II. xxxi. 7, De Clem. I. iii. 2., De Benej.
IV. xxvi. 1, Bpp. xcv. 51 ff. ; Epictetus, Diss. IV. v. 10; Antoninus VII.
13; together with the additional references given by Zeller, p. 286 ff. It
is to be observed that the mutual love attributed to human beiDgs by the Stoic
philosophers stands, not for an empirical characteristic, but for an unrealized
ideal of human nature. The actual feelings of men towards one another are
described by Seneca in language recalling that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.
“Erras,” he exclaims, “si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis : hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum: nisi quod illarum perniciosior est primus
incursus. Nunquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas injicit: aut fame
aut timore coguntur ad pugnam: liomini perdere hominem iibet.—”Bpp. ciii. 2.
�The Stoics.
55
to Seneca, who had evidently far more capacity for popularizing
and applying the thoughts of others than for original speculation,
and who on this subject expresses himself with a rhetorical
fluency not usually characterizing the exposition of new dis
coveries. The same remark applies to his illustrious successors,
who, while agreeing with him in tone, do not seem to have drawn
on his writings for their philosophy. It is also clear that the
idea in question springs from two essentially Stoic conceptions :
the objective conception of a unified world, a Cosmos to which
all men belong; and the subjective conception of a rational
nature common to them all. These, again, are rooted in early
Greek thought, and were already emerging into distinctness at
the time of Socrates. Accordingly we find that Plato, having to
compose a characteristic speech for the Sophist Hippias, makes
him say that like-minded men are by nature kinsmen and
friends to one another.
*
Nature, however, soon came to be
viewed under a different aspect, and it was maintained, just as
by some living philosophers, that her true law is the universal
oppression of the weak by the strong. Then the idea of mind
came in as a salutary corrective. It had supplied a basis for the
ethics of Protagoras, and still more for the ethics of Socrates;
it was now combined with its old rival by the Stoics, and from
their union arose the conception of human nature as something
allied with and illustrated by all other forms of animal life, yet
capable, if fully developed, of rising infinitely above them.
Nevertheless, the individual and the universal element were never
quite reconciled in the Stoic ethics. The altruistic quality of
justice was clearly perceived ; but no attempt was made to show
that all virtue is essentially social, and has come to be recognized
as obligatory on the individual mainly because it conduces to the
safety of the whole community. The learner was told to con
quer his passions for his own sake rather than for the sake of
others; and indulgence in violent anger, though more energetic
ally denounced, was, in theory, placed on a par with immoderate
delight or uncontrollable distress. So, also, vices of impurity
were classed' with comparatively harmless forms of sensuality,
and considered in reference, not to the social degradation of their
victims, but to the spiritual defilement of their perpetrators.
Yet, while the Stoics were far from anticipating the methods
■of modern Utilitarianism, they were, in a certain sense, strict
Utilitarians—that is to say, they measured the goodness or bad
ness of actions by their consequences; in other words, by their
bearing on the supposed interest of the individual or of the com
* Plato, Protagoras, 337 I).
�56
The Stoics.
munity. They did not, it is true, identify interest with pleasure
or the absence of pain ; but although, in our time, Hedonism and
Utilitarianism are, for convenience, treated as interchangeable
terms, they need not necessarily be so. If any one choose to re
gard bodily strength, health, wealth, beauty, intellect, knowledge,
or even simple existence, as the highest good and the end con
duciveness to which determines the morality of actions, he is a
Utilitarian; and, even if it could be shown that a maximum of
happiness would be ensured by the attainment of his end, he
does not on that account become a Hedonist. Now it is certain
that the early Stoics at least regarded the preservation of the
human race as an end which rightfully took precedence of every
other consideration ; and, like Charles Austin, they liked to push
their principles to paradoxical or offensive extremes, apparently
for no other purpose than that of affronting the common feelings
of mankind, without remembering that such feelings were likely
*
to represent embodied experiences of utility. Thus—apart from
their communistic theories—they were fond of specifying the
circumstances in which incest would become legitimate; and
they are said not only to have sanctioned cannibalism in cases of
extreme necessity, but even to have recommended its introduction
as a substitute for burial or cremation; although this, we may
hope, was rather a grim illustration of what they meant by moral
indifference than a serious practical suggestion.f Besides the
encouragement which it gave to kind offices between friends and
neighbours, the Stoic doctrine of humanity and mutual love was
honourably exemplified in Seneca’s emphatic condemnation of
the gladiatorial games and of the horrible abuses connected with
domestic slavery in Rome.I But we miss a clear perception that
such abuses' are always and everywhere the consequences of
slavery ; and the outspoken abolitionism of the naturalists
alluded to by Aristotle does not seem to have been imitated by
their successors in later ages.§ The most one can say is that
the fiction of original liberty was imported into Roman juris-*
§
* “ He [Charles Austin] presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most
startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them
which tended to consequences offensive to any one’s preconceived feelings.”—
Mill’s Autobiography, p. 78.
f Zeller, p. 281.
J “ Homo sacra res homini jam per lusum et jocum occiditur .... satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.”—Seneca, Epp. xcv. 33. “ Servi sunt ?
Immo homines. Servi sunt ? Immo contubernales. Servi sunt ? Immo humiles amici. Servi sunt ? Immo conservi.”—Ibid, xlvii. 1. Compare the
treatise Ee Ira, passim.
§ Seneca once lets fall the words, “fortuna re quo jure genitos alium alii
donavit.”—Consol, ad Marciam,.^. 2; but this is the only expression of the
kind that we have been able to discover in a Stoic writer of the empire.
�The Stoics.
57
prudence through the agency of Stoic lawyers, and helped to
familiarize men’s minds with the idea of universal emancipation
before political and economical conditions permitted it to be
made a reality.
It is probable that the philanthropic tendencies of the Stoics
were, to a great extent, neutralized by the extreme individualism
which formed the reverse side of their philosophical character;
and also by what may be called the subjective idealism of their
ethics. According to their principles no one can really do good
to any one else, since what does not depend on my will is not a
good to me. The altruistic virtues are valuable, not as sources
of beneficent action, but as manifestations of benevolent senti
ment. Thus, to set on foot comprehensive schemes for the relief
of human suffering seemed no part of the Stoic’s business.
And the abolition of slavery, even had it been practicable,
would have seemed rather superfluous to one who held that true
freedom is a mental condition within the reach of all who
desire it, while the richest and most powerful may be, and
*
for the most part actually are, without it. Moreover, at the
time when philosophy gained its greatest ascendency, the one
paramount object of practical statesmen must have been to save
civilization from the barbarians, a work to which Marcus Aure
lius devoted his life. Hence we learn without surprise that
the legislative efforts of the imperial Stoic were directed to the
strengthening, rather than to the renovation, of ancient insti
tutions. Certain enactments were, indeed, framed for the pro
tection of those who took part in the public games. It was
provided, with a humanity from which even our own age might
learn something, that performers on the high rope should be en
sured against the consequences of an accidental fall by having
the ground beneath them covered with feather beds; and the
gladiators were only allowed to fight with blunted weapons. It
must, however, be noted that in speaking of the combats with
wild beasts which were still allowed to continue under his reign,
Marcus Aurelius dwells only on the monotonous character which
made them exceedingly wearisome to a cultivated mind; just
as a philosophic sportsman may sometimes be heard to observe
that shooting one grouse is very like shooting another; while
elsewhere he refers with simple contempt to the poor wretches,
who, when already half-devoured by the wild beasts, begged to
be spared for another day’s amusement.
*
Whether he knew the
whole extent of the judicial atrocities practised on his Christian
subjects may well be doubted ; but it may be equally doubted
* Seneca, JEpp. lxxx.
j-Antoninus, Comm. vi. 46; x. 8.
�58
The Stoics.
whether, had he known it, he would have interfered to save
them. Pain and death were no evils ; but it was an evil that the
law should be defied.
Those manifestations of sympathy which are often so much
more precious than material assistance were also repugnant to
Stoic principles. On this subject, Epictetus expresses himself
with singular harshness. ,£ Do not,” he says, “ let yourself be put
out by the sufferings of your friends. If they are unhappy, it is
their own fault. God made them for happiness ; not for misery.
They are grieved at parting from you, are they? Why, then,
did they set their affections on things outside themselves ? If
they suffer for their folly it serves them right.”*
On the other hand, if Stoicism did not make men pitiful, it
made them infinitely forgiving. Various causes conspired to
bring about this result. If all are sinners, and if all sins are
equal, no one has a right, under pretence of superior virtue, to
cast a stone at his fellows. Such is the point of view insisted on
with especial emphasis by Seneca, who, more perhaps than
other philosophers, had reason to be conscious how far his.
practice fell short of his professions.! But, speaking generally,
pride was the very last fault with which the Stoics could be
charged. Both in ancient and modern times satirists have been
prone to assume that every disciple of the Porch, in describing his
ideal of a wise man, was actually describing himself. No mis
conception could be.more complete. It is like supposing that,
because Christ commanded his followers to be perfect even as
their heavenly Father is perfect, every Christian for that reason
thinks himself equal to God. The wise man of the Stoics had,
by their own acknowledgment, never been realized at all; he
had only been approached by three characters, Socrates, Antis
thenes, and Diogenes. “ May the sage fall in love ?” asked
a young man of Panaetius. “ What the sage may do,” replied
the master, “ is a question to be considered at some future time.
Meanwhile, you and I, who are very far from being sages, had
better be careful how we let ourselves become the slaves of
a degrading passion.”!
In the next place, if it is not in the power of others to injure
us, we have no right to resent anything that they can do to us.
So argues Epictetus, who began to learn philosophy when still a
slave, and was carefully prepared by his instructor, Musonius,
* Epictetus, Diss. III. xxiv.
f Seneca, De Ira, I. xiv. 2; De Clement. I. vi. 2.
J Seneca, Jipp. cxvi. 4. It must be borne in mind that Pansetius was
speaking at a time when the object of passion would at best be either another
man’s wife or a member of the demi-monde.
�The Stoics.
59
to bear without repining whatever outrages his master might
choose to inflict on him. Finally, to those who urged that they
might justly blame the evil intentions of their assailants, Marcus
Aurelius could reply that even this was too presumptuous, that
all men did what they thought right, and that the motives of
none could be adequately judged except by himself. And all
the Stoics found a common ground for patience in their optimistic
fatalism, in the doctrine that whatever happens is both necessarily
determined, and determined by absolute goodness combined with
infallible wisdom.
Doctrines like these, if consistently carried out, would have
utterly destroyed so much of morality as depends on the social
sanction ; while, by inculcating the absolute indifference of ex
ternal actions, they might ultimately have paralysed the indi
vidual conscience itself. But the Stoics were not consistent.
Unlike some modern moralists, who are ready to forgive every
injury so long as they are not themselves the victims, our
philosophers were unsparing in their denunciations of wrong
doing ; and it is very largely to their indignant protests that we
are indebted for our knowledge of the corruption prevalent in
Roman society under the Empire. It may even be contended
that, in this respect, our judgment has been unfairly biassed.
The picture drawn by the Stoics, or by writers trained under
their influence, seems to have been too heavily charged with
shadow ; and but for the archaeological evidence we should not
have known how much genuine human affection lay concealed
in those lower social strata where Christianity found a readier
acceptance because it only gave a supernatural sanction to habits
and sentiments already made familiar by the spontaneous ten
dencies of an unwarlike regime.
Before parting with Stoicism we have to say a few words on
the metaphysical foundation of the whole system—the theory
of Nature considered as a moral guide and support. It has
been shown that the ultimate object of this, as of many other
ethical theories, both ancient and modern, was to reconcile the
instincts of individual self-preservation with virtue, which is the
instinct of self-preservation in an entire community. The Stoics
identified both impulses by declaring that virtue is the sole good
of the individual no less than the supreme interest of the whole;
thus involving themselves in an insoluble contradiction. For,
from their nominalistic point of view, the good of the whole can
be nothing but an aggregate of particular goods, or else a means
for their attainment; and in either case the happiness of the
individual has to be accounted for apart from his duty. And
an analysis of the special virtues and vices would equally have
forced them back on the assumption, which they persistently
�60
The Stoics.
repudiated, that individual existence and pleasure are intrin
sically good, and their opposites intrinsically evil. To prove
their fundamental paradox—the non-existence of individual as
distinguished from social interest—the Stoics employed the
analogy of an organized body where the good of the parts
unquestionably subserves the good of the whole; and the
object of their teleology was to show that the universe and,
by implication, the human race, were properly to be viewed
in that light. The acknowledged adaptation of life to its
environment furnished some plausible arguments in support
of their thesis; and the deficiencies were made good by a
revival of the Heracleitean theory in which the unity of nature
was conceived partly as a necessary interdependence of opposing
forces, partly as a perpetual transformation of every substance
into every other. Universal history also tended to confirm the
same principle in ■ its application to the human race. The
Macedonian, and still more the Roman empire brought the
idea of a world-wide community living under the same laws
ever nearer to its realization ; the decay of the old religion
and the old civic patriotism set free a vast fund of energy, some
of which was absorbed by philosophy; while a rank growth of
immorality offered ever new opportunities for an indignant
protest against senseless luxury and inhuman vice. This last
circumstance, however, was not allowed to prejudice the optimism
of the system; for the fertile physics of Heracleitus suggested
a method by which moral evil could be interpreted as a necessary
concomitant of good, a material for the perpetual exercise and
illustration of virtuous deeds.
Yet, if the conception of unity was gaining ground, the con
ceptions of purpose and vitality must have been growing weaker
as the triumph of brute force prolonged itself without limit or
hope of redress. Hence Stoicism in its later forms shows a
tendency to dissociate the dynamism of Heracleitus from the
teleology of Socrates, and to lean on the former rather than on the
latter for support. One symptom of this changed attitude is a
blind worship of power for its own sake. We find.the renuncia
tion of pleasure and the defiance of pain appreciated more
from an eesthetic than from an ethical point of view; they are
exalted almost in the spirit of a Red Indian, not as means to
higher ends, but as manifestations of unconquerable strength;
and sometimes the highest sanction of duty takes the form of a
morbid craving for applause, as if the universe was a Coliseum
and life a gladiatorial game.
The noble spirit of Marcus Aurelius was, indeed, proof against
such temptations; and he had far more to dread than to hope
from the unlightened voice of public opinion; but to him also,
�The Stoics.
61
“ standing between two eternities/’ Nature presented herself
chiefly under the aspect of an overwhelming and absorbing force
Pleasure is not so much dangerous as worthless, weak, and
evanescent. Selfishness, pride, anger, and discontent will soon
be swept into abysmal gulfs of oblivion by the roaring cataract
of change. Universal history is one long monotonous procession
of phantasms passing over the scene into death and utter
night. In one short life we may see all that ever was, or is, or is
to be; the same pageant has already been and shall be repeated
an infinite number of times. Nothing endures but the process
of unending renovation : we must die that the world may be ever
young. Death itself only reunites us with the absolute All whence
we come, in which we move, and whither we return. But the
imperial sage makes no attempt to explain why we should ever
have separated ourselves from it in thought; or why one life
should be better worth living than another in the universal
vanity of things.
The physics of Stoicism were, in truth, the scaffolding, rather
than the foundation, of its ethical superstructure. The real
foundation was the necessity of social existence formulated
under the influence of a logical exclusiveness first introduced by
Parmenides, and inherited from his teaching by every system of
philosophy in turn. Yet there is no doubt that Stoic morality
was considerably strengthened and steadied by the support it
found in conceptions derived from a different order of specula
tions ; so much so that at last it grew to conscious independence
of that support.
Marcus Aurelius, a constant student of Lucretius, seems to
have had occasional misgivings with respect to the certainty of
his own creed ; but they never extended to his practical beliefs.
He was determined that, whatever might be the origin of this
world, his relation to it should be still the same. “Though things
be purposeless, act not thou without a purpose.” “ If the universe
is an ungoverned chaos, be content that in that wild torrent thou
hast a governing reason within thyself.”*
There seems, then, good reason for believing that the law of
* Comm. IX. 28, xii. 14. A modern disciple of Aurelius has expressed
himself to the same purpose in slightly different language :—
“ Long fed on boundless hopes, 0 race of man,
How angrily thou spurn’st all simpler fare!
‘ Christ,’ some one says, ‘ was human as we are.
No judge eyes us from heaven our sin to scan;
We live no more, when we have done our span.’
‘ Well, then, for Christ,’ thou answerest, ‘who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear ?
Live we, like brut es, our life without a plan I ’
�62
The Stoics.
duty, after being divorced from mythology, and seriously
compromised by its association, even among the Stoics them
selves, with our egoistic instincts, gained an entirely new
authority when placed, at least in appearance, under the sanction
of a power whose commands did not even admit of being dis
obeyed. And the question spontaneously presents itself whether
we, after getting rid of the old errors and confusions, may profit
ably employ the same method in defence of the same convictions,
whether the ancient alliance between fact and right can be
reorganized on a basis of scientific proof.
A great reformer of the last generation, finding that the idea
of Nature was constantly put forward to thwart his most cherished
schemes, prepared a mine for its destruction which was only ex
ploded after his death. Seldom has so powerful a charge of
logical dynamite been collected within so small a space as in
Mill’s famous Essay on Nature. But the immediate effect was
less than might have been anticipated, because the attack was
supposed to be directed against religion, whereas it was only
aimed at an abstract metaphysical dogma, not necessarily con
nected with any theological beliefs, and held by many who have
discarded all such beliefs. A stronger impression was perhaps
produced by the nearly simultaneous -declaration of Sir W. Gull
—in reference to the supposed vis meclicatrix natures—that, in
cases of disease, “what Nature wants is to put the man in his
coffin/’’ The new school of political economists have also done
much to show that legislative interference with the “natural
laws” of wealth need by no means be so generally mischievous
as was once supposed. And the doctrine of Evolution, besides
breaking down the old distinctions between Nature and Man,
has represented the former as essentially variable, and therefore,
to that extent, incapable of affording a fixed standard for moral
action. It is, however, from this school that a new attempt to
rehabilitate the old physical ethics has lately proceeded. The
object of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics is, among other
points, to prove that a true morality represents the ultimate
stage of evolution, and reproduces in social life that permanent
equilibration towards which every form of evolution constantly
tends. And Mr. Spencer also shows how evolution is bringing
about a state of things in which the self-regarding shall be finally
So answerest tliou ; but why not rather say :
‘ Hath man no second life ?—Pitch this one high I
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see ?
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey I
Was Christ a man like us ?—Ah ! let us try
If we then, too, can he such men as lie!’ ”
The Better Part, by Mr. Matthew Arnold. The italics are in the original.
�The Stoics.
63
harmonized with the social impulses. Now, it will be readilyadmitted that morality is a product of evolution in this sense
that it is a gradual formation, that it is the product of many con
verging conditions, and that it progresses according to a certain
method. But that the same method is observed through all
orders of evolution seems less evident. For instance, in the
formation, first of the solar system, and then of the earth's crust,
there is a continual loss of force, while in the development of
organic life there is as continual a gain ; and on arriving at sub
jective phenomena we are met by facts which, in the present
state of our knowledge, cannot advantageously be expressed in
teims of force and matter at all. Even if we do not agree with
George Sand in thinking that self-sacrifice is the only virtue, we
must admit that the possibility, at least, of its being some
times demanded is inseparable from the idea of duty;
and without consciousness self-sacrifice cannot be conceived ;
which is equivalent to saying that it involves other than me
chanical notions. Thus we are confronted by the standinodifficulty of all evolutionary theories, and on a point where
that difficulty is peculiarly sensible. Nor is this an objection
to be got rid of by the argument that it applies to all philo
sophical systems alike. To an idealist, the dependence of
morality on consciousness is a practical confirmation of his
professed principles. Holding that the universal forms of ex
perience are the conditions under which an object is apprehended,
rather than modifications imposed by an unknowable object
on an unknowable subject, and that these forms are common to
all intelligent beings, he holds also that the perception of
duty is the widening of our individual selves into that uni
versal self which is the subjective side of all experience.
Again, whatever harmony evolution may introduce into our
conceptions, whatever hopes it may encourage with regard to the
future of our race, one does not see precisely what sanction it
gives to morality at present—that is to say, how it makes self
sacrifice easier than before. Because certain forces have been
unconsciously working towards a certain end through ages past,
why should I consciously work towards the same end ? If the
perfection of humanity is predetermined, my conduct cannot
prevent its consummation; if it in any way depends on me, the
question returns, why should my particular interests be sacrificed
to it ? The man who does not already love his contemporaries
whom he has seen is unlikely to love them the more for the sake
of a remote posterity whom he will never see at all. Finallv, it
must be remembered that evolution is only half the cosmic pro
cess ; it is accompanied at every stage by partial dissolution, to
which in the long run it must entirely give way; and if, as Mr.
�64
The Stoics.
Spencer observes, evolution is the more interesting of the
*
two, this preference is itself due to the lifeward tendency of our
thoughts ; in other words, to those moral sentiments which it is
sought to base on what, abstractedly considered, has all along
been a creation of their own.
The idea of Nature, or of the universe, or of human history,
as a whole—but for its evil associations with fanaticism and
superstition, we should gladly say the belief in God—-is one the
ethical value of which can be more easily felt than analysed.
We do not agree with the most brilliant of the English Positi
vists in restricting its influence to the aesthetic emotions. The
elevating influence of these should be duly recognized, but the
place due to more severely intellectual pursuits in moral training
is greater far. Whatever studies tend to withdraw us from the
petty circle of our personal interests and pleasures are indirectly
favourable to the preponderance of social over selfish impulses ;
and the service thus rendered is amply repaid, since these very
studies necessitate for their continuance a large expenditure of
moral energy. It might even be contended that the influence
of speculation on practice is determined by the previous influence
of practice on speculation. Physical laws act as an armature to
the law of duty, extending and perpetuating its grasp on the
minds of men ; but it was through the magnetism of duty that
their confused currents were first drawn into parallelism’ and
harmony with its attraction. Yet those who base morality on
religion, or give faith precedence over works, have discerned
with a sure, though dim, instinct the dependence of noble and
far-sighted action on some paramount intellectual initiative and
control; in other words, the highest ethical ideals are conditioned
by the highest philosophical generalizations. And what was
once a creative, still continues to work as an educating force.
Our aspirations towards agreement with ourselves and with
humanity as a whole are strengthened by the contemplation of
that supreme unity, which, even if it be but the glorified
reflection of our individual or generic identity, still remains the
idea in and through which those lesser unities were first com
pletely realized—the idea which has originated all man’s most
fruitful faiths, and will at last absorb them all. Meanwhile
our highest devotion can hardly find more fitting utterance
than in the prayer which once rose to a Stoic’s lips :—
“ But Jove all-bounteous ! who in clouds
enwrapt the lightning wieldest;
May’st Thou from baneful Ignorance
the race of men deliver !
* First Principles, § 177.
I
�
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The Stoics
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Benn, Alfred William
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 33-64 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review, 61 (January 1882). A review of Die Philosophie der Griechen by Dr. Edwaed Zeller. Leipzig, 1880.
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Stoics
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Book Reviews
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Stoics