Stoicism
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page 6
NOTE
As a consequence of the success of the
series of Religions
Ancient and Modern, Messrs. CONSTABLE have decided
to issue
a set of similar primers, with brief introductions, lists of dates,
and selected authorities, presenting to the wider public the
Rome and of
salient features of the Philosophies of Greece and
modern
of
as
They will
as well
Europe.
the Middle Ages,
appear in the same handy Shilling
volumes, with neat cloth
which have proved so attractive
bindings and paper envelopes,
The writing in each case will be
case of the
in the
Religions.
has already
confided to an eminent authority, and one who
himself capable of scholarly yet popular exposition
proved
within a small compass.
be
Among the first volumes to appear will
W. BENN, author of The Philo
Early Greek Philosophy. By A.
sophy of Greece, Rationalism
:
in the Nineteenth Century.
of Deduc
By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author
etc.
the
of
Plato,
editor
of
tive Logic,
Apology
Stoicism.
By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University,
Plato.
author of The Problem oj Conduct.
Scholasticism.
By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
Hobbes.
Locke.
By Father RICKABY, S. J.
By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.
By T. W. WHITTAKER, author
Comte and Mill.
of
The
and other Essays.
Neoplatonists, Apollonius of Tyana
Herbert Spencer.
By W. H. HUDSON, author of
An Intro
duction to Spencer s Philosophy.
Schopenhauer.
Berkeley.
Bergsen.
By T. W. WHITTAKER.
By Professor CAMPBELL FRASEK,
By Father TYRRELL.
D. C. L. LL. D.
,
page 9
FOREWORD
As an adherent of the Peripatetic ^School myself,
I
do not hold a brief for the Stoics, but I have
endeavoured to do them
little
justice, and perhaps a
not
been
on the alert to rob
more,
having
them of some borrowed plumes.
The Porch has
been credited with a great deal that really be
longed to the Academy or the Lyceum. If you
Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful
misuse of language, what is left is simply the
moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
strip
dashed with the physics of Heraclitus.
Stoicism
was not so much a new doctrine as the form
under which the old Greek philosophy finally
presented itself to the world at large.
It
owed
popularity in some measure to its extrava
gance.
great deal might be said about Stoicism
its
A
as a religion, and about the
part it played in the
formation of Christianity, but these subjects were
excluded by the plan of this volume, which was
to present a sketch of the Stoic doctrine based
on the original authorities.
ST.
GEOKGE STOCK, M.A.
Pemb. Coll. Oxford.
page 13
STOICISM
CHAPTER I
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
AMONG the Greeks and Romans of the classical
age philosophy occupied
religion
among
ourselves.
reason, not to revelation.
in his Offices (ii.
6),
are
the
place
taken
by
Their appeal was to
To what, asks Cicero
we to look for training
not to philosophy ?
The modern
mind answers: To religion.
Now, if truth is
in virtue,
if
believed to rest upon authority, it
it
is
natural that
should be impressed upon the mind from the
earliest age, since the essential
should be believed
;
thing is that it
but a truth which makes its
appeal to reason must be content to wait till
reason is developed.
We are born into the
Eastern, Western, or Anglican communion or
some other denomination, but it was of his own
free choice that the serious-minded
or
young Greek
Roman embraced the tenets of one of the
A
I
page 14
STOICISM
divided the world of philo
great sects which
which led him to do so in
sophy. The motive
the first instance may have been merely the
influence of a friend or a discourse from
some
once made was
eloquent speaker, but the choice
own choice, and he adhered to it as such.
his
Conversions from one sect to another were of quite
A certain Dionysius of Heraclea,
the Stoics to the Cyrenaics,
from
over
who went
rare occurrence.
was ever afterwards known as
was as
It
1
to be independent in philo
with us to be independent in
difficult
sophy as
politics.
the deserter.
it
is
When a young man joined a school, he
committed himself to all its opinions, not only as
to the end of life, which was the main point of
division, but as to all questions on all subjects.
Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics
he differed also in his
fromVthe
The
Epicurean;
theology and his physics
"aifcT
his metaphysics.
Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought
men
unfit to hear
moral philosophy.
young
And yet
was a question or rather the question of
moral philosophy, the answer to which decided
the young man s opinions on all other points.
The language which Cicero sometimes uses about
it
1
Diog. Laert. vii.
94.
71 ; Fin. v.
6 iLfraOtucvot,
Acail. Pr.
ii.
166
;
cp.
23, 37
:
Cic.
page 15
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
the seriousness of the choice
made in early life
and how a young man gets eri trammelled
school before he
us of what we
by a
really able to judge, reminds
hear said nowadays about the
is
danger of a young
man s taking orders before
his opinions are formed. 1
To this it was replied
young man only exercised the right of
private judgment in selecting the authority whom
that the
he should
follow, and,
trusted
him
to
for
having once done that,
all
the
rest.
With the
analogue of this contention also we are familiar
in modern times. Cicero allows that there would
be
something in it, if the selection of the true philo
sopher did not above all things require the philo
sophic mind. But in those days it was
probably
the case, as it is now, that, if a man did not form
opinions in youth, the pressure of
speculative
affairs would not leave him leisure to do
so later.
-P16 life-spanj>f JSena, thg jQund[ez,Q Stoicism,
was frWl^a. 347 ^to ^275^_He did not
begin
teaching till 315, at the mature age of forty.
Aristotle had passed
away in 322, and with
closed the great constructive era of Greek
him
thought.
The Ionian philosophers had
speculated on the
physical constitution of the universe, the
Pytha
goreans on the mystical properties of numbers,
1
Acad. Pr.
8: N.D. i.
3
66.
page 16
STOICISM
of fire,
Heraclitus had propounded his philosophy
had struck out a rude
and
Democritus
Leucippus
raised
form of the atomic theory, Socrates had
to man, Plato had discussed
questions relating
of the dialogue, while
freedom
them with all the
worked them out.
Aristotle had
systematically
The later schools did not add much to the body
of philosophy.
What they did was to emphasise
of their predeces
different sides of the doctrine
and to drive views to their logical conse
sors,
quences. The greaksson_pfJGr^
to do right, irrespective
is that it is worth while
of the
^ r^irdTnd
.
punishinentand jregardless
hortness^oflff
lives and the
forced by the earnestness of their
of their
teaching, that it has-
fl
mora^
become associatedlin^i particularly .with them.
influence
himself as an
though he always classed
he is afraid
that
one
place
Academic, exclaims in
Cicero,
when
the Stoics are the only philosophers, and,
ever he is combating Epicureanism,
is
that of a Stoic.
his language
Some of Vergil s most eloquent
seem to be inspired by Stoic specula
Even Horace, despite his banter about the
tion.
in his serious moods borrows the language
passages
1
sage,
i
Georg. iv. 219-227 ;
Mv. vi. 724-751.
Aug. C.D. xiv. 3.
4
Cp. D.L. vii.
110 ;
page 17
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
of the Stoics.
It
was they who inspired the
highest flights of declamatory eloquence in
Their moral philosophy
Persius and Juvenal.
affected the world through Roman law, the great
masters of which were brought up under its in
fluence.
So all-pervasive indeed was this moral
philosophy of the Stoics, that it was read by the
Jews of Alexandria into Moses under the veil
of allegory, and was declared to be the inner
meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Stoics
then did^not^add ...much -to- -the -body of philo
they did a great work in popularising it
sophy,
and bringing it to bear upon life.
An intense practicality was a mark of the later
This was common to Stoicism
Greek philosophy.
with
its
rival
Epicureanism.
Both
regarded
the art of life, though they differed
in- their conception of wha-t that art should be.
philosophy as
Widely as the two schools were opposed to one
another, they had also other features in common.
Both were children of an age in which the free
city had given way to monarchies, and personal
had taken the place of corporate life.
The
of happiness is no longer, as with
and
still more with Plato, one for the
Aristotle,
question
state,
but for the individual.
In both schools
the speculative interest was feeble from the first,
5
page 18
STOICISM
and tended to become feebler as time went on.
Both were new departures from pre-existent
schools.
Stoicism was bred out of Cynicism, as
Both were
Epicureamsrn~ouF of Cyrenaicism.
back lor their physics upon the
pre-Socratic schools, the one adopting the firephilosophy of Heraclitus, the other the atomic
content to
fall
theory of Dernocritus. Both were in strong re
action against the abstractions of Plato and
Aristotle,
and would
tolerate nothing but
con
The Stoics were quite as material
in
their
own
istic
way as the Epicureans. With
crete reality.
regard indeed to the nature of the "liighes t good
we may, with Seneca, 1 represent the difference be
tween the two schools as a question of the senses
against the intellect, but we shall see presently
that the Stoics regarded the, intellect itself as
r
being a kind of body.
The Greeks were all agreed that there was an
end or aim of life, and that it was to be called
happiness, but at that point their agreement
ended. As to the nature of happiness there was
the utmost variety of opinion.
Democritus had
made it consist in mental serenity, 2 Anaxagoras
1
2 quicumque voluptatem in summo ponuut,
Epist. 124,
nos contra intellegibile, qui illud
sensibile indicant bonum
:
:
animo damus.
2
Stob. ii. 76: D.L. ix.
45.
6
page 19
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
in wisdom, Aristotle
in speculation, Socrates
in
the practice of virtue with some amount of favour
Aristippus simply in pleasure.
These were opinions of the philosophers. But,
from
fortune,
besides these, there were the opinions of ordinary
men as shown by their lives rather than by their
on the
language. Zeno s contribution to thought
subject does not at first sight appear illuminating.
He said that the end was
to live consistently/
1
the implication doubtless being that no life but
the passionless life of reason could ultimately be
consistent with
itself.
Cleanthes, his immediate
is credited with having
added the words with nature/ thus completing
to
is
s the well-known Stoic formula, that the end
successor in the school,
I live
2
consistently with nature.
It was assumed by the Greeks
nature were
that the ways of
the ways of pleasantness/ and that
This may seem to us
were peace.
is because we do
that
but
a startling assumption,
all her paths
not mean by
nature
the same thing as they did.
We connect the term with the origin of a thing,
they connected it rather with the end; by the
natural state we mean a state of savagery, they
1
2
Stob. Eel. ii. 132, TO bfj-oXoyov/uifrus 9)v.
D.L. vii.
87, TO bfj.o\oyoi>fj.tvus
Ibid. 134;
Cic. Off.
ii.
13,
convenienter naturae vivere.
7
TTJ
<i/<rei
Ify.
{
page 20
STOICISM
meant the highest civilisation; we mean by a
thing s nature what it is or has been, they meant
what it ought to become under the most favour
able conditions not the sour crab, but the mellow
:
glory of the Hesperides, worthy to be guarded by
a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks the natural
Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that
apple.
is a natural product, because
it is
evolved out of social relations which exist by
the State
nature.
Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous
term
the Greeks no less than to ourselves, 1
to
but in the sense with which we are now concerned
the
nature
of
anything
was
defined
2
Peripatetics as the end of its becoming.
definition of theirs
clearly
:
puts the matter
by the
Another
still
more
What each thing is when its growth has
been completed, that we declare to be the nature
of each thing. 3
Following out this conception the Stoics identi
fied a life in accordance with nature with a life in
accordance with the highest perfection to which
Now, as man was essentially
a rational animal, his work as man lay in living
man could attain.
And the perfection of reason
the rational life.
1
See the manifold definitions of it given in Arist. Met. iv. 4.
2
Arist. Met. iv. 4,
3
Arist. Pol.
i.
2,
7,
ri>
rAoj TTJS
8.
8
page 21
GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
Hence the ways of nature were no
other than the ways of virtue. And so it came
was virtue.
about that the Stoic formula might be expressed
number of different ways, which yet all
amounted to the same thing. The end was to
in
a
live the virtuous
to live
in
life,
or to live consistently, or
accordance with
nature,
or
to
live
rationally.
The end of life then being the attainment of
happiness through virtue,
stand related to that end ?
that it was regarded as
how
did philosophy
We have seen already
the art of life.
Just as
medicine was the art of health, and the art of
an art
sailing navigation, so there needed to be
of living.
Was it reasonable that minor ends
should be attended
neglected ?
to,
and the supreme end
page 22
CHAPTER
II
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY was defined by the Stoics as the
1
It was
knowledge of things divine and human.
divided into three departments, logic, ethic, and
This division indeed was in existence
physic.
before their time, 2 but they have got the credit of
as of
it,
originate.
some other things which they did not
Neither was
it
confined to them, but
Even
was part of the common stock of thought.
the Epicureans, who are said to have rejected
as dissentients from
logic, can hardly be counted
For what they did was to
this threefold division.
substitute for the Stoic logic a logic of their own,
3
dealing with the notions derived from sense,
much in the same way as Bacon substituted his
1
Cic.
Fin. ii.
37, Off.
Pint. 874 E, Plac. Phil. i.
i.
153
Cic.
Acad. Post.,
:
ad init.
3
v.
Arist. Top.
i.
14,
4
:
9.
5
Sen. Ep. 89,
11.
10
19 ; Fin. iv.
4,