Stoics and Septics
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page 24
20
WAS STOICISM UNHELLENIC?
if we
could recover the writings of the founder and
in what context of thought and emotion
understand
those phrases were
first
flung forth, out of which the
must be
We
well-known Stoic paradoxes were framed.
content, as it is, to take the Stoic teaching in the form
in which it issued from the laboratory of Chrysippus, as
whole, without hoping to distinguish, except very
conjecturally, what it was at its first beginning, with
a
Zeno, with Cleanthes.
There is one question about it which naturally suggests itself at the outset, and which has been repeatedly
asked Was the teaching of Zeno a pure development
:
of Hellenic philosophy, or did
it
owe elements to his
Phoenician home ? Those who maintain that the philo-
sophy of Zeno was purely Hellenic can no doubt show
how each part of it was connected with the previous
to the
philosophic tradition in Greece, and according
stories, of course, the impulse which turned the young
merchant into a philosopher came not from
his
home
influences, but from the Athenian schools.
Everybody
would nevertheless admit some new and distinctive
element in Zeno's teaching, and it may be asked whether
this distinctive element
had affinities with Eastern lore.
that the question can ever
Personally, I do not think
be answered, for the simple reason that we do not
know anything about the wisdom of the Phoenicians.
It is idle to discuss whether a child resembles its mother,
no means of finding out what the mother was
Men indeed had thought about life and written
if there is
like.
books for centuries in the Nearer East
lonian
and Assyrian
clay-tablets,
:
we have Baby-
we have numerous
page 25
I
<
ORIENTAL' WISDOM
21
sacred writings of the Hebrews ; and this may be enough
to enable the people
who operate with the vague and
'
unserviceable concept of Oriental
'
to theorize confi-
It
dently about a non-Hellenic element in Stoicism.
be
most
unsafe
to
deduce
the
would, however,
prevalent
conceptions among the Phoenicians in the fourth century
B.C. from the fragments of cuneiform writings ; and the
Hebrews, we know,
felt
themselves
in
many ways
the antithesis of the surrounding peoples.
That the
Phoenicians had a traditional wisdom of their
indeed probable
;
such
'
Wisdom
'
own is
literature as is exem-
Hebrews by the Book of Proverbs
among
had
have
may
parallels among the Northern
But it would not be wise to build much
Semites.
plified
the
or Job
upon such a mere possibility.
But if we are unable to show that the matter of Zeno's
teaching owed anything to a Semitic tradition, we may,
I think, see
something in the manner of it which makes
Zeno differ from the established type of Greek philosopher by an approximation to the Eastern prophet.
Or perhaps one should not say Eastern prophet, because
the Greek philosopher was a peculiar product of Hellenism within the last two or three centuries, and
type of teacher, was found
generally among mankind outside the Hellenic sphere,
the other, the prophetic
even to some extent within it, if we may take Pythagoras,
for instance, or Empedocles as an example.
One only
the type Eastern because in the Near East it
remained the standard type of teacher, whereas it was
calls
superseded in Hellenism by the philosopher.
The pro-
phets are those, to quote Seeley's description in Ecce
page 26
ZENO AS PROPHET
22
who have seemed to themselves to discover truth,
not so much by a process of reasoning as by an intense
gaze, and who have announced their conclusions in the
voice of a herald, using the name of God and giving no
reasons.'
The Greek type of philosopher had reached
Homo^
*
completion in Socrates and Plato with their eironeia,
of assertion, their placing
themselves on a common footing with their hearers.
its
their apparent tentativeness
characteristically represented the discovery of
truth not as a process in which one proclaimed and the
Plato
other believed, but as a conversation in which truth,
latent in the mind, was elicited by rational argument.
This
is
the
Thus
The prophet and philosopher speak
very opposite of the prophet's
saith the
Lord
in quite
different
'.
tones
of voice.
'
Now the curious
thing about Zeno, it seems to me, is that while his
message was Hellenic, his tone of voice was that of the
prophet.
He had something positive to say, something
he wished
men to believe, and he conformed to the
Hellenic requirements in throwing his message, as we
have seen, into the form of brief syllogistic arguments.
But one has only to look
syllogisms
at
those laconic, clenched
that they have by themselves no
were
merely a vehicle for the intense
They
to
see
cogency.
convictions of the teacher.
dogmatic, authoritative.
in what manner
lar combination
.''
His teaching was essentially
He named Reason, yes
:
but
One might perhaps express the singuof manner and matter in his message by
*
If
saying that its burden was Thus saith Reason '.
men received it, it was not because they were convinced
in a cold intellectual way, but because
behind his affir-
page 27
STOIC
I
DOGMATISM
23
mations there was a tremendous personal force, because
something deep in their own hearts rose up to bear witIt was the way of faith.
ness to the things he affirmed.
We cannot make Zeno himself responsible for the
great scholastic system framed by Chrysippus, for all
the dogmas and paradoxes which were part of the
stereotyped Stoic doctrine later on, but we have every
reason to believe that the peculiar features which dis-
tinguished Stoicism were due to Zeno, and that the
founder's teaching was essentially dogmatic and paraIt seems to me a mistake when, in order to
doxical.
accommodate it to our ways of thinking, its peculiarities
are minimized and its characteristics toned down, as if
what it meant were really something quite ordinary and
common sense. I think it really meant something
only its violence may be sympathetically construed, if we understand the urgency which lay upon it.
violent
:
Dogma in our days suggests an unnecessary intellectual
garment which trammels and incommodes the mind
we hardly realize the bitter need for dogma felt by
:
minds which have been stripped shivering naked.
We
must consider at what a moment in the history of ancient
civilization
Zeno of Citium appeared.
The culture of the Greeks was a development of the
Mankind had been
last two or three centuries only.
many thousands of years on the earth, and for the last
few thousand years there had been great civilizations,
But in these last
with arts and literatures and laws.
with the Hellenes, a new thing had come
ten
generations,
to exist, or rather a quality in
human nature had been
developed to an effectiveness
and power never known
page 28
GREEK RATIONALISM
24
-
before
the quality which we describe as Rationalism.
The ancestors of the Hellenes, like the rest of mankind,
had lived in
societies each
of which maintained a firm
tradition for its members as to the
powers operative in
the world and as to the binding rules of conduct.
To
say that every individual had accepted, as a matter of
course, the view of the world and the rules of conduct
prevalent in his society would be too much ; for there
had always, no doubt, been individuals who questioned
points in the tradition and opposed or evaded particular
But among the Greeks such questioning had
rules.
come to be systematic and extensive
;
it
was not the
case of an individual revolting, but of a new tradition of
free inquiry
a recognition
growing up in the midst of the society,
of Reason as superseding tradition in all
departments of life, a clearer distinction between the real
of the world and the work of human imagination
facts
made before. It had begun, of
a
with
few
course,
eager spirits, and the new ferment had
than had ever been
been confined at first to little groups of inquirers and
disciples,
but with the Sophistic movement in the fifth
century b.c. it had run everywhere through the Greek
You know how that made everything seem in
world.
flux,
everything uncertain.
Even the ordinary man in
fifth-century Athens became aware that clever people no
longer believed in his old gods and his old standards of
And in the time of Zeno, scepticism
right and wrong.
was not only an abstract theory. Those were the days
of the Greek conquest of the East, when the individual
adventurer was finding larger and larger scope
there
was plenty of the practical scepticism of the man who had
;
page 29
I
THE UNSOLVED ENIGMA
25
being a philosopher, but only knew
that he could follow his egoistic will without troubling
no pretensions
to
himself about the gods.
Socrates, indeed, and Plato
had seemed to lay in the midst of this confusion the
new positive knowledge and morality.
But one must not suppose that the Socratic schools had
foundation for
put an end to the Sophistic unrest. To meet a wide popuneed, Platonism was too fine-drawn, too abstruse,
lar
too tentative.
Such a general break-up of tradition was
one of the things which this new Rationalism in the Greek
The situation was one which
no human society, I think we may say, had before in the
world had brought about.
world's history been called upon to face.
We must consider that the tradition which in old days
had enclosed each individual from his birth up, fashioning
giving him fixed rules for conduct,
had supplied a need. And the need remained.
It was
his ideas of the world,
not merely that the explanation of the world contained
in
the old
mythology had been found absurd, and
that man was left confronted with an unsolved enigma.
That might in itself be unpleasant ; man has a dis-
interested curiosity ;
and an unsolved enigma means
intellectual discomfort.
But man might have put up
with that and acquiesced in agnosticism, if the problem
had been stationary, simply to understand what the
world is here and now.
It was Time which made the
poignancy of the need. The reality with which men
were confronted was a moving one ; they were being
carried onward,
each one into a future of unknown
possibilities, and whatever might lie
on the other side of
death, the possibilities on the hither side were disquieting
page 30
THE GREAT FEAR
26
enough In the fourth century b.c. Even in our firmly
ordered and peaceful society, hideous accidents may
befall the individual ;
but in those days, when the world
showed only despotic monarchies and warring city-states,
one must remember that slavery and torture were contingencies which no one could be sure that the future
Now the old tradition had
did not contain for him.
made man feel that this movement, in which he was
borne along, was subject to the will of beings kindred
to himself.
The gods might be envious and vindictive,
but there was a mind and heart there to appeal to,
not altogether unlike the human
there was something
-
with which man might establish friendly relations and be
at peace.
If all that faded into an empty dream, man
found himself left naked to fortune.
With the mass
of passionate desires and loves he carried
in his heart,
the unknown chances of the future meant ever-present
fear.
Unless he could find his good and possess it in such
way that no conceivable horror which might spring
upon him out of that Unknown could touch it, fear must
a
be always there, in the background of his thoughts.
This Fear, as we shall see, was one of the constituents of
human misery specially noted in the Stoic school, one
of the things from which Zeno promised deliverance.
But it was something more than relative security in
looking forward into the future which the old tradition
had afforded. Besides giving a certain view of the
world,
it
behaviour.
had given rules of conduct, standards of
And the most imperative reason why man
could not simply discard the old tradition and remain
contentedly agnostic
is
found
here.
It
was not only
page 31
THE SOCIAL CODE
I
27
that the reality confronting him was in
movement, and
that the possibilities of the future for himself made him
This fear, even if a worse agony than mere
fearful.
intellectual discomfort before an unsolved
enigma, might
man had been simply
The important thing was that man was not
have been borne perforce,
passive.
if
the passive spectator of a process
at Reality ;
:
he did not only look
He was compelled,
he helped to make it.
whether he wished or not, to act, each fresh minute
of his conscious life. And his voluntary action could not
be other than purposive
:
that is to say, in making new
Reality, he was obliged to have regard not only to what
existed already, but to what
to exist, to Values,
ought
to
Good.
implies a valuetradition gave each individual
Every voluntary
judgement. The old
a body of
value-judgements
action
in all that the social code
And besides stamping certain sorts of
good.
behaviour as good in themselves, good in the sense of
called
praiseworthy, the old tradition had coupled extrinsically
the goods which were the common
of human
desire
- pleasure,
objects
health, riches,
and so on
- with the
conduct which it approved, by representing the gods as
interested in such conduct
and as dispensing rewards.
The individual had therefore a fairly complete guide
for life.
But now that all the traditional canons of
conduct had been challenged, and the gods had become
a
doubtful fable, the question what
it
was good
for
man to do clamoured to be answered. The passionate
desires and loves which man carried in his heart created
indeed values by which the action of mankind, as Zeno
a
looked
at
it,
was everywhere determined.
But the
page 32
DESIRE
28
was not happiness. Mankind seemed to be
driven hither and thither in a sea of contrary desires
result
;
one impulse overrode and frustrated another ; the things
which men took for good brought them no satisfaction
when they were gained
;
human life was a chaos, in
which blind Desire was the propelling force, and action
-
was spasmodic, furious, vain a misery of craving for
This blind
ever disappointed and for ever renewed.
Desire was
the
other great
constituent, besides
the
Fear, in that human misery which the gospel of Zeno
And the two so worked together that
claimed to meet.
a remedy for one would cure the other.
For if Zeno
was able to put man in possession of a good, secure
from all the chances of the morrow, then the desire
of man need be directed to nothing beyond it. There
was no place for either Desire or Fear any more.
It was such a good which Stoicism bade men see
Zeno asked in effect what happiness
within their reach.
really was, and he found it
-
this is the essential point
-
not in a particular sort of sensation or sum of sensations,
as men were apt to suppose, but in
Will.
A man
is
an attitude of the
happy when what he wills exists.
It was
in terms of Will that Value was to be interpreted ;
when
Zeno said that this or that was a goody he meant this or
that leaves the Will satisfied.
I
am happy, when I do
not want things to be any other than they are. /
Among
the things present to my consciousness may be a painful
sensation ; but
myself
will.
it
is
not an evil for me, if it is what I
One may, I think, take as an illustration the
painful effort which is felt in athletic exercise ; the ache
of the muscle is in itself unpleasant, and yet it does not
page 33
STOIC HAPPINESS
I
detract
29
from the man's happiness in the moment of his
he would not wish it away.
Happiness is the
correspondence of what exists with the Will, and men
activity ;
whose wills were in bondage to desire tried to find it by
shaping outside circumstances according to their desires.
This put them at the mercy of fortune and made them
Suppose we brought about the correspondence in another way, by willing what exists ? Then,
slaves to fear.
Zeno said, we have a happiness which sets a man free,
makes him Independent in face of the storms of fortune,
He feels pain no less than
extinguishes desire and fear.
before as an unpleasant sensation, but it is not an evil
for him any more, because the attitude of his will towards
it is
The agony of the rack, of disease, he will
changed.
feel as the athlete feels his self-chosen effort
:
he would
There Is the story of Posidonius,
not have It otherwise.
the great Stoic of the days of Cicero, receiving a visit
from Pompey in Rhodes, whilst suffering from a painful
At every fresh spasm which interrupted the
*Do your worst, pain, do
conversation, he cried out
disease.
:
your worst
:
never compel me to acknowledge
will
you
'
that you are an evil
!
^
- somewhat
theatrical, perhaps,
but a true declaration of the Stoic principle.
think
1
one must concede
to
Zeno
adjustment of the Will were carried out,
away with
and
fear
circumstances.
entail
that
it
if
absolute independence of
And has one any right to dismiss it
Is It not
straight away as a psychological impossibility
true that our wills are ours, we know not how ?
.''
*
'
Nihil agis, dolor
malum.'
this
would do
!
quamvis sis molestus, numquam te esse
Cic. Tusc. Dis. ii. 6l.
And
confitebor
page 34
ADJUSTMENT OF THE WILL
30
is
it
we do sometimes will the painful ?
not true that
And if we can will the painful in the case of athletic
exercise, is it unreasonable to think that we might with
determination and practice enlarge our faculty for doing
even to the point of willing all conceivable pains
which might befall us ? This aspect of the Stoic doctrine
so,
has been put forcibly by Heinrich Gomperz in his book
Die Lebensauffassungder griechischen Philosophen. Gomperz
only regrets that the Stoics coupled their doctrine of
redemption by adjustment of the Will with statements
Their doctrine of
about the nature of the Universe.
redemption, he seems to think, stood strong on its own
ground and was only weakened by dogmatic assertions
at which the modern agnostic man must naturally shy.
I do not know whether this is a view which commends
Personally I quite understand that if you
are a convinced agnostic, you will have no more use for
itself to you.
Only I do not see
the Stoic dogma than for any other.
that without such dogma the Stoic precept can be urged
with any reason.
Why should 1
happens.''
that
adjust my will to what
refuse to consider any pain
Why should
comes
to
me an evil
.'*
I
The Stoic had an answer
Because everything that happens is determined
ready
the
If you discard the Stoic
by
sovereign Reason.
:
belief in the Rational
the world,
I
Purpose controlling the course of
cannot see why you should call everything
that happens to you good.
Universe
is
If the power governing the
represented as an arbitrary Personal Will,
one feels that the attitude of Mill, refusing to call good
what is not good
- To
'
- more honour-
'
hell I will
able than a servile acquiescence.
go
is
And I do not see that
page 35
THE NEED FOR A SYSTEM
I
31
the attitude of acquiescence becomes any more honourable, if the Universe is driven by blind impersonal forces.
may be more prudent not to struggle, but it seems a
poor sort of freedom that is won by an acted fiction.
Zeno at any rate felt that his injunction to men to
It
of the world could only
adjust their wills to the course
be reasonably given, if the world were of a certain charac-
His doctrine, like that of the later Greek philorather to meet
sophical schools in general, was elaborated
ter.
a
practical
need than to
satisfy speculative curiosity.
But he was just as aware as his contemporary Epicurus
that you cannot have ethical doctrine without a basis of
can have no rule
physical and metaphysical doctrine ; you
of conduct without some view of the universe wherein
the action is to take place.
He was therefore compelled
to provide an answer to those physical and metaphysical
problems which had been agitating Greek thought.
He had to take the whole field of Greek intellectual
on Logic, on Rhetoric even, he
interests into his
scope
-
In a system of this
had to lay down clear principles.
kind, made under such pressure, we must expect to find
good deal is put in simply to support the
make the system complete.
points, to join them up and
And it seems to me that if we are to appreciate the Stoic
the points to
system intelligently, we must distinguish
vital
that a
which
real
about
importance was attached, the things
which the constructors really cared, from what one may
One of the reasons, I think, which
call
stop-gap theory.
often make accounts of Stoicism dull is that a painstaking
student has drawn the Stoic doctrines one by one from
the
sources and put them together in methodical
literary