The Stoic’s need for a sound mind
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The Stoic’s need for a sound mind by Nigel Glassborow March 2019
thestoa@hotmail.co.uk
‘The happy life… is a life that is in harmony with its own nature, and it can be attained
in only one way. First of all, we must have a sound mind and one that is in constant
possession of its sanity; second, it must be courageous and energetic, and, too,
capable of the noblest fortitude, ready for every emergency, careful of the body and
of all that concerns it, but without anxiety; lastly, it must be attentive to all the
advantages that adorn life – the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.’ [On
the happy life iii, ‘Seneca Moral Essays’ Translation by John W Basore]
A sick person does not need a place; he needs medical treatment. If someone has a
broken leg or dislocated a joint, he doesn’t get on a carriage or a ship; he calls a
doctor to set the fracture or relocate the limb. Do you get the point? When the mind
has been broken and sprained in so many places, do you think it can be restored by
changing places? Your trouble is too grave to be cured by moving around. Travel
does not make one a doctor or an orator. One does not learn a skill from one’s
location. Do you suppose that wisdom, the greatest of all skills, can be assembled on
a journey? Believe me, there is no journey that could deposit you beyond desires,
beyond outbursts of temper, beyond your fears. If that were so, the human race
would have headed there in droves. So long as you carry around the reasons for your
troubles, wandering all over the world, those troubles will continue to harass and
torment you. Are you puzzled that running away is not helping you? What you are
running from is with you. You need to correct your flaws, unload your burdens, and
keep your desires within a healthy limit.” [CIV - On
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the care of Health and Peace of Mind,
‘Seneca Epistulae Morales’ Translation by Richard M Gummere.]
There is an ongoing debate as to if we have ‘free-will’. The science of the workings of our
brains can show that we are already acting before we consciously ‘decide’ to act as we act.
It would appear that matters deep within us have already ‘pre-determined’ how we are to
act in every instance of our lives, albeit sometimes by only a matter of fractions of a second
before we become aware that such action has been initiated. Even quite random choices as
to a choice between what to drink to quench a feeling of thirst are not spontaneous.
So, as we cannot be responsible for what ‘pops into our minds’, it is necessary to ensure that
we are of sound mind and can deal with what ‘pops into our minds’ as appropriately as
possible.
But if we are not responsible for what our minds dish up and are not in conscious control of
the decisions that our physical brains have already made for us how can we ever become
better than we are?
Without any knowledge of the science of the brain that we have available to us today,
Stoicism recognised this problem of ‘pre-determined’ thoughts and so directed part of the
training of the Stoic to concentrate on ‘changing their mind’. Stoicism, in its belief that the
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physics of life is a combination of matter and mind, saw a thought arising in the mind as
being an inner action triggered by the physical properties of an ‘impressions’ together with
our ‘opinions’, where the thought is a precursor to further action that will affect the outer
world – the world of society.
However Stoicism teaches us that we have the free-will to ‘change’ our minds and so change
the flow of inner action whereby it does not become inappropriate outer action - provided
that we are attentive to what we are thinking and where such is directing us. Our bodies
may already be moving towards action in response to this or that by such things as raising
the blood flow and by increasing the production of various hormones etcetera. We may
even have started to act externally on our thoughts such as blurting out some comment
before we have time to consciously think through the consequences, but by the use of
conscious reasoned thought we can mitigate, redirect or reverse such sub-conscious induced
activity.
At the same time, Stoicism teaches us that, through habituation, we can change the
processes that are driving our thoughts. While it is often said that we Stoics believe that we
cannot be held responsible for what we think, only for the choices we make in light of such
thoughts, in truth Stoicism tells us that we are, once we have achieved adulthood,
responsible for the habituation of our deep down subconscious thought process. Stoicism
teaches us to examine our thought processes and to re-habituate our neural pathways by
self-indoctrination. And we start to reprogram our minds by settling on a belief system that
will form a framework of ideas which will become embedded into the workings of our brain
whereby, as much as possible, our thoughts and actions will be
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governed by such principles –
even before we become consciously aware of a situation.
However, Stoicism does not associate the individual’s will solely with the workings of the
brain. Rather the starting point for all Stoic psychology is that our true consciousness, our
will, is the result of our being one with the Whole in that we are manifested by and out of
the body of God where the body of God is the passive Prime Matter imbued with a Single
Mind – of which our will is a ‘spark’.
And for whatever reason, God has evolved us to have a free will – a will that is part of God’s
very being and so is inextricably linked to the Whole, but a will that is gifted to us whereby
we are free to partake, in accord with our individual nature and our nature as human beings,
in the ongoing determination of how matters will evolve in the never ending flow of change
that is Existence. We have been given a free will which makes us individuals in our own
right. But regardless of having a free will, Stoicism teaches us that our psychological
wellbeing involves us in aligning our free will with the will of God:
‘For I regard God’s will as better than my will. I shall attach myself to Him as a
servant and follower, my choice is one with His, my desire one with His, in a word my
will is one with His will.’ [IV.VII. ‘Epictetus, the discourses as reported by Arrian, the Manual and
Fragments’ Translated by W A Oldfather.]
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We are taught to live as we see fit while learning what such means by looking to God for
guidance. Such guidance is generally to be found by looking to what God is telling us
through the nature of life and all that we find around us.
We look to the Stoic mantra ‘Live in accord with Nature’ for it is through looking to the
design of all around us that we can see the nature of Existence, the nature of the world on
which our lives depend, our nature as human social animals, and our nature as individuals
with the ability to reason.
We also, in looking to the common perception of all the world faiths, see that trying to live
good and honourable lives, so becoming people of good character, is what living wisely
involves and that this means aligning our will with the will of the Whole – or in other words,
God.
And to this end, so that we may be as consistent as possible in our drive to be the best we
can, we keep reminding ourselves of our oneness with God while also looking as to how we
can use such knowledge to ensure that our brains are working for us and not against us.
And so we move on to recognising that we have an independent will or self that can
reprogram our minds while also watching over the output of our brains as ‘a second line of
defence’.
And of course, based on the Stoic view of the physics of existence, our will is more than just
the output of our brain. The brain is made out of the same material that manifests the
whole Cosmos. But the brain is only part of our being. The whole of our body is made up
out of the material that manifests the whole Cosmos, and so our ‘spark’ of the ‘intelligence’
that is an aspect of the Cosmos is not limited to the ‘matter’ that forms our brain. Our will is
linked to our whole being, not just to the biological computer
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contained within our skulls.
As a result, much of the Stoic mind training is aimed at ensuring that we ‘act’ according to
our will as against acting at the behest of some errant program in our brain that is
presenting us with a misperceived impression that has set the brain on pushing for an
inappropriate course of action.
For the Stoic, our will is an aspect of who we are, but it is not solely the output of our brains.
It is so much more, for it reaches out to the Cosmos and all around us and it can perceive our
place within the Whole while seeing that our individual well-being is in truth achieved
through putting the well-being of all around us first whereby we can rest contented that we
have ‘played our part well’ when it comes to the play of life.
Working out what we can reasonably and appropriately do for the well-being of the whole
requires that we are able to:
‘See things in all their naked reality.’ [IV.11. ‘The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus, together with his speeches and essays’ Translated by C R Haines.]
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In other words we need to be able to see reality as it is, and not necessarily as our emotions,
instinctive reactions or the programming of our brain may see things. It may be that such
inbuilt aspects of our brains do at times see matters correctly, but the Stoic is taught to
ensure that such have been properly trained and will answer the rule of reason as applied by
our will – our whole self.
Epictetus did a pretty good job of outlining much of the Stoic training methods, but what
many forget is that the setting aside of the emotions is only a temporary aspect of the early
training of novices. As Epictetus says:
With such high aims, therefore, remember that you must bestir yourself with no slight
effort to lay hold of them, but you will have to give up some things entirely, and defer
others for the time being. [I.IV The Encheiridion of Epictetus as translated by W A Oldfather]
From this we see Epictetus telling us that there are some aspects that lead to an unsound
mind, such as anger, that are to be avoided for ever and a day. However there is much that
may be deferred ‘for the time being’ – that is, until such time as the initial stage of our study
of Stoicism is over and we are able to start having some degree of rational control over such
matters.
Stoicism does not demand that we avoid all emotions or affections for ever and a day, only
emotions that are excessive, violent, aggressive, inappropriate and beyond the rule of our
will. Calmer natural appropriate emotions, affections and feelings are to be encouraged –
just as appropriate love for our children and spouses is encouraged, where the word
‘appropriate’ is key.
Stoicism recognises that often emotions are triggered by not seeing matters as they are –
false impressions. Many of our instinctive reactions can
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be triggered by false impressions,
such as seeing a shadow cast by a tree as presenting the apparent shadow of a wild animal
lying in wait to attack us. And to add to our problems of being able to see reality as it is, the
process of the workings of our brains can involve emotionally loaded memories of past
events that automatically colour the fresh impressions we are receiving from our senses in
the present moment in a negative way, so leading us to react in an inappropriate way.
So Epictetus advises anyone not of sound mind who wishes to become a Stoic to set aside
preconceived ideas and avoid any situations that may elicit emotional responses until such
time as they have examined the whole of the Stoic teachings and have seen how it all fits
together. And such is set aside until the novice has achieved some mastery over their brain.
That is, we have to achieve a level of self-control through the use of our reasoning faculty
together with a balance between the ‘feeling’ and ‘rational’ aspects of our mind – the
achievement of which is seen as ‘being of sound mind’.
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For some the Stoic training will be hard work because of some clinical issue affecting them
whereby trying to maintain a sound mind requires more work than most may need. For
some, by nature and/or upbringing, what it takes to maintain a sound mind will be the norm
and they will experience only minor blips to their normal level state of mind. Whereas for
many starting out, they will have need to regain control of their mind from the onslaught of
their emotions and their inappropriate habituated mind sets and so will need to work to set
the foundations in place while also working through the Stoic mind training.
And for the person who holds back because they think such is beyond them, Seneca reminds
us:
‘Do you know why we have not the power to attain the Stoic Ideal? It is because we
refuse to believe in our power. Nay, of a surety, there is something else which plays a
part: it is because we are in love with our vices; we uphold them and prefer to make
excuses for them rather than shake them off… The reason is unwillingness, the
excuse, inability.’ [CXVI. On Self Control, ‘Seneca Epistulae Morales’ Translation by Richard M
Gummere]
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