Stoics

“ The Stoics are of more importance. Despite the fact that their philosophic interests lay rather in ethics and physics, their activity in what they classified as the third department of speculation was enormous and has at least left ineffaceable traces on the terminology of philosophy. Logic is their The Stoics. word, and consciousness, impression and other technical words come to us, at least as technical words, from Roman Stoicism. Even inference, though apparently not a classical word, throws back to the Stoic name for a conclusion. ”

“ The Stoics, arising when the Greek city life was decaying, contemplated man as an individual, and undertook to show him how to lead a good life. A good life means a 'life according {100} to nature,' or 'according to reason': the reason of the individual being a part of the universal reason or God. And as a help in living according to reason, the Stoics laid stress upon the conscience in each man, i.e. a faculty lying behind his ordinary surface self, passing judgement according to reason upon his actions, and 'making cowards of us all,' inasmuch as we all do wrong. ”

“ If the Stoics recognize no essence other than matter, and think that other things are modifications of matter, they are wrong in reducing essence and other things to a common class; they should rather say that essence is being, and that other things are modifications, and then distinguish between these modifications. ”

“ The Stoics tried to treat man as a being of pure reason. The Peripatetics would not shut their eyes to his mixed nature, and contended that the good of such a being must also be mixed, containing in it elements which had reference to the body and its environment. The goods of the soul indeed, they said, far outweighed those of body and estate, but still the latter had a right to be considered. ”

“ The strong argument of the Stoics against such reasoning as this, was their doctrine of pre-established harmony between nature and the soul, so that when a representation is produced in us of a real object, a καταληπτικὴ φαντασία, [2] by this representation the soul grasps a real existence. There is a λόγος in us which is of the same kind, σύγγενος, or in relation to all nature. ”

“ The Stoics have chosen to treat, in the first place, of perception and sensation, because the criterion by which the truth of facts is ascertained is a kind of perception, and because the judgment which expresses the belief, and the comprehension, and the understanding of a thing, a judgment which precedes all others, cannot exist without perception. ”

“ Such also were the Stoics, who ascribed to the bodily senses that expertness in disputation which they so ardently love, called by them dialectic, asserting that from the senses the mind conceives the notions (ἔννοιαι) of those things which they explicate by definition. And hence is developed the whole plan and connection of their learning and teaching. I often wonder, with respect to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that beauty, by what eyes of the flesh have they seen wisdom's comeliness [Pg 317] of form? ”

“ And thus it is obvious that, whether these outward things are called goods or advantages, they are held in the same estimation by both parties, and that in this matter the Stoics are pleasing themselves merely with a novel phraseology. It seems, then, to me that in this question, whether the wise man is subject to mental passions, or wholly free from them, the controversy is one of words rather than of things; for I think that, if the reality and not the mere sound of the words is considered, the Stoics hold precisely the same opinion as the Platonists and Peripatetics. ”

“ How then, does it happen that the nature of man is the only one which ever abandons man, which forgets the body, which places the chief good, not in the whole man, but in a part of man? And how, as they themselves admit, and as is agreed upon by all, will it be preserved, so that that ultimate good of nature, which is the subject of our inquiry, shall resemble every nature? For it would resemble them, if in other natures also there were some ultimate point of excellence. For then that would seem to be the chief good of the Stoics. Why, then, do you hesitate to alter the principles of nature? ”

“ The Peripatetics are answered by the Stoics; they have my leave to fight it out, who think myself no otherwise concerned than to inquire for what may seem to be most probable. Our present business is, then, to see if we can meet with anything in this question which is the probable, for beyond such approximation to truth as that human nature cannot proceed. ”

“ The Epicurean system is even more purely practical in tendency than the Stoic. In spite of the fact that Stoicism subordinates logic and physics to ethics, yet the diligence and care which the Stoics bestowed upon such doctrines as those of the criterion of truth, the nature of the world, the soul, and so on, afford evidence of a genuine, if subordinate, interest in these subjects. ”

“ Concerning philosophy in general, the doctrine of the Stoics was, that wisdom consists in the knowledge of things divine and human; that philosophy is such an exercise of the mind as produces wisdom; that in this exercise consists the nature of virtue; and consequently, that virtue is a term of extensive meaning, comprehending the right employment of the mind in reasoning, in the study of nature, and in morals. ”

“ A ‘Metaphysical Ethics’ is marked by the fact that it makes the assertion: That which would be perfectly good is something which exists, but is not natural; that which has some characteristic possessed by a supersensible reality. Such an assertion was made by the Stoics when they asserted that a life in accordance with Nature was perfect. ”

“ Then why should you think it impossible for a man who finds, without going further, that the Stoics make true statements, to believe them and dispense with further witness? He knows that four can never be five, though ten thousand Platos or Pythagorases said it was. ”

“ The Stoics strove to create in a man's mind the volitions appropriate for such mental discipline, by depicting the beneficial consequences resulting from it, and the misfortune and shame inevitable, if the mind were not so disciplined. Their purpose was to strengthen the governing reason of his mind, and to enthrone it as a fixed habit and character, which would control by counter suggestions the impulse arising at each special moment—particularly all disturbing terrors or allurements. ”

“ This argument we Stoics commonly divide into three parts; the first of which is, that the existence of the Gods being once known, it must follow that the world is governed by their wisdom; the second, that as everything is under the direction of an intelligent nature, which has produced that beautiful order in the world, it is evident that it is formed from animating principles; the third is deduced from those glorious works which we behold in the heavens and the earth. ”

“ But accustomed to regard every thing spiritual only in a sensuous way, the Stoics were obliged to clothe this ideal conception of God in a material form, apprehending it as the vital warmth or an original fire, analogous to the view of the earlier natural philosophers, who held that the soul, and even reason itself, consisted in the vital warmth. ”

“ But they differ widely as to what the nature of man is, and as to what his virtue and his happiness consist in. According to the Stoics, man's nature is, we may say, a nature above nature. According to the Epicureans, it is a nature on a level with nature. The Stoic places man's nature in the activity of reason, of thought, of the spirit. ”

“ To prove their fundamental paradox—the non-existence of individual as distinguished from social interest—the Stoics employed the analogy of an organised body where the good of the parts unquestionably subserves the good of the whole;100 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. ”

“ We find it everywhere in the unsophisticated man. We find it in the unguarded self-revelations of the most severe and conscientious Atheists. Now, the Stoics, like many other schools of thought, drew an argument from this consensus of all mankind. ”

“ In the early part of the second century, we find him trying first one school of philosophers and then another, and abandoning each in disgust. The Stoics would talk to him of nothing but virtues and vices, of regulating the diet and curbing the passions, and keeping the intellect as quiet as possible—a convenient way, as experience taught them, of avoiding trouble ”

“ The Stoics, more particularly, thought of Nature or the Universe as a living organism, of which the material world was the body, and of which the Deity or the Universal Reason was the pervading, animating, and governing soul; and natural law was the rule of conduct laid down by this Universal Reason for the direction of mankind. ”

“ Out of the general ideas which nature imparts to us, reason was perfected about the age of fourteen, at the time when the voice—its outward and visible sign—attains its full development, and when the human animal is complete in other respects as being able to reproduce its kind. Thus reason which united us to the gods was not, according to the Stoics, a pre-existent principal, but a gradual development out of sense. It might truly be said that with them the senses were the intellect. ”

“ The nobody is a conjunctive argument, and one that consists of the indefinite and the definite, and which has a minor premiss and a conclusion; as, for instance, “If any one is here, he is not in Rhodes.”
L. Such then are the doctrines which the Stoics maintain on the subject of logic, in order as far as possible to establish their point that the logician is the only wise man. ”

“ The wisdom of the Stoics is either progressive, through several stages; or perfect, when every weakness if subdued, and every error corrected, without the possibility of a relapse into folly, or vice, or of being again enslaved by any passion, or afflicted by any calamity. ”

“ The Stoics combined this axiom with the principle of sufficient reason, that the process of becoming is governed by the law of necessary determination. Thus, if the material part of man is derived from and returns to the four elements, his spiritual part must be derived, on the principal of sufficient reason, from the universal mind, and into that it returns. ”

“ Some curious instances of false analogy are to be found in the arguments of the Stoics to prove the equality of all crimes, and the equal wretchedness of all who had not realized their idea of perfect virtue. ”

“ The Stoics, whom you are parodying, were remarkable people, but their doctrine crystallized two thousand years ago and has not advanced, and will not advance, an inch forward, since it is not practical or living. It had a success only with the minority which spends its life in savouring all sorts of theories and ruminating over them ”

“ And they (the Stoics, I mean) who are not willing to accommodate their opinions unto the things indeed, but wrest and force against the course of nature things unto their own conceits and suppositions, have filled all philosophy with great difficulties and doubtful ambiguities ”

“ It may have a certain activity of its own, but this activity is confined exclusively to materials supplied by the physical organs of sense. This theory stands, of course, in sheer opposition to the idealism of Plato, for whom the mind alone was the source of knowledge, the senses being the sources of all illusion and error. The Stoics denied the metaphysical reality of concepts. Concepts are merely ideas in the mind, abstracted from particulars, and have no reality outside consciousness. ”

“ A distinct parallelism may be traced in the lines of evolution along which we have accompanied our two opposing schools. While the Academicians were coming over to the Stoic theory of cognition, the Stoics themselves were moving in the same general direction, and seeking for an external reality more in consonance with their notions of certainty than the philosophy of their first teachers could supply. ”

“ The Stoics, whose opinions were, in all the different parts of philosophy, either the same with, or very nearly allied to those of Aristotle and Plato, though often disguised in very different language, held, that all things, even the elements themselves, were compounded of two principles, upon one of which depended all the active, and upon the other all the passive, powers of these bodies. ”

“ Just as with the Stoics determinateness is held to be an object of thought, we have in modern times this same manifestation of thought as the unmoved form of simplicity. Only here [359] the image or inner consciousness of totality is present, the absolute spirit which the world has before it as its truth and to whose Notion it makes its way—this is another inward principle, another implicitude of mind which it endeavours to bring forth from itself and for itself, so that reason is a comprehension of the same, or has the certitude of being all reality. ”

“ The wise man of the Stoics, on the other hand, has built his house upon the rock. He shuns, according to the Pythagorean maxim, the ways of the multitude, and trusting to the illumination of divine Reason, he takes the narrow path.1730 His guiding light is the principle that the “kingdom of heaven is within,” that man’s supreme good depends only on himself, that is, on the unfettered choice of reason. ”

“ Plutarch on the Stoic doctrine of knowledge: "The Stoics maintain," he says, "that when a human being is born, he has the governing part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready prepared for the reception of writing, and on this the soul inscribes in succession its various ideas. The first form of the writing is produced through the senses. When we perceive, for example, {232} a white object, the recollection remains when the object is gone. And when many similar recollections have accumulated, we have what is called experience. ”