Chapter XIII: THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued) (2)

The grand object of Epicurus was to make the current of life flow on as comfortably as possible, without any distracting thoughts of the past or any disturbing visions of the future. He therefore starts with this fundamental principle, that the true philosophy of life is to enjoy one's self--the aim of existence is to be happy. Whatever in a man's beliefs or conduct tends to secure happiness is _right_; whatever awakens uneasiness, apprehension, or fear, is _wrong_. And inasmuch as the idea of a Divine Creator and Governor of the universe, and the belief in a future life and retribution, are uncomfortable thoughts, exciting superstitious fears, they ought to be rejected. The Physics and the Psychology of Epicurus are thus the natural outgrowth of his Morality.

Zeno was evidently a more earnest, serious, and thoughtful man. He cherished a nobler ideal of life than to suppose "man must do voluntarily, what the brute does instinctively--eschew pain, and seek pleasure." He therefore seeks to ascertain whether there be not some "principle of nature," or some law of nature, which determines what is right in human action--whether there be not some light under which, on contemplating an action, we may at once pronounce upon its intrinsic _rightness_, or otherwise. This he believes he has found in the _universal reason_ which fashioned, and permeates, and vivifies the universe, and is the light and life of the human soul. The chief good is, confessedly, to live according to nature; which is to live according to virtue, for nature leads us to that point.... For our individual natures are all part of the universal nature; on which account, the chief good is to live in a manner corresponding to one's own nature, and to universal nature; doing none of those things which the common law of mankind (the universal conscience of our race) forbids. _That common law is identical with_ RIGHT REASON _which pervades every thing, being the same with Jupiter_ (Zeus), _who is the regulator and chief manager of all existing things_.[824] The foundation of the ethical system of the Stoics is thus laid in their philosophy of nature--their Physiology and Psychology. If, therefore, we would apprehend the logical connection and unity of Stoicism, we must follow their order of thought--that is, we must commence with their

PHYSIOLOGY.

Diogenes Laertius tells us that the Stoics held "that there are two general principles in the universe--the _passive_ principle (to naschon), which is matter, an existence without any distinctive quality, and the _active_ principle (to poioun), which is the reason existing in the passive, that is to say, God. For that He, being eternal, and existing throughout all matter, makes every thing."[825] This Divine Reason, acting upon matter, originates the necessary and unchangeable laws which govern matter--laws which the Stoics called logoi spermatikoi--generating reasons or causes of things. The laws of the world are, like eternal reason, necessary and immutable; hence the eimarmenê--the _Destiny_ of the Stoics, which is also one of the names of the Deity.[826] But by Destiny the Stoics could not understand a blind unconscious necessity; it is rather the highest reason in the universe. "Destiny (eimarmenê) is a connected (eiromenê) cause of things, or the reason according to which the world is regulated."[827]

[Footnote 824: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.]

[Footnote 825: Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. lxviii.]

[Footnote 826: "They teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind, and _Fate_, and Jupiter."--Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. lxviii.]

[Footnote 827: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. lxxiv.]

These two principles are not, however, regarded by the Stoics as having a distinct, separate, and independent existence. One is substance (ousia); the other is quality (poios). The primordial matter is the passive ground of all existence--the original substratum for the Divine activity. The Divine Reason is the active or formative energy which dwells within, and is essentially united to, the primary substance. The Stoics, therefore, regarded all existence as reducible, in its last analysis, to _one substance_, which on the side of its passivity and capacity of change, they called _hyle_ (ylê);[828] and on the side of its changeless energy and immutable order, they called God. The corporeal world--physical nature--is "a peculiar manifestation" of God, generated from his own substance, and, after certain periods, absorbed in himself. Thus God, considered in the evolution of His power, is nature. And nature, as attached to its immanent principle, is called God.[829] The fundamental doctrine of the Stoics was a spiritual, ideal, intellectual pantheism, of which the proper formula is, _All things are God, but God is not all things_.

[Footnote 828: Or "matter." A good deal of misapprehension has arisen from confounding the intellectual ylê of Aristotle and the Stoics with the gross physical "matter" of the modern physicist. By "matter" we now understand that which is corporeal, tangible, sensible; whereas by ylê, Aristotle and the Stoics (who borrowed the term from him) understood that which is incorporeal, intangible, and inapprehensible to sense,--an "unknown something" which must necessarily be _supposed_ as the condition of the existence of things. The _formal_ cause of Aristotle is "the substance and essence"--the primary nature of things, on which all their properties depend. The _material_ cause is "the matter or subject" through which the primary nature manifests itself. Unfortunately the term "material" misleads the modern thinker. He is in danger of supposing the _hyle_ of Aristotle to be something sensible and physical, whereas it is an intellectual principle whose inherence is implied in any physical thing. It is something distinct from _body_, and has none of those properties we are now accustomed to ascribe to matter. Body, corporeity, is the result of the union of "hyle" and "form." Stobaeus thus expounds the doctrine of Aristotle: Form alone, separate from matter (ylê) is _incorporeal_; so matter alone, separated from form, is not _body_. But there is need of the joint concurrence of both these--matter and form--to make the substance of body. Every individual substance is thus a totality of matter and form--a sinolon.

The Stoics taught that God is _oneliness_ (Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. lxviii.); that he is _eternal_ and _immortal_ (bk. vii. ch. lxxii.); he could not, therefore, be corporeal, for "body _infinite, divisible,_ and _perishable_" (bk. vii. ch. lxxvii.). "All the parts of the world are perishable, for they change one into another; therefore the world is perishable" (bk. vii. ch. lxx.). The Deity is not, therefore, absolutely identified with the world by the Stoics. He permeates all things, creates and dissolves all things, and is, therefore, _more_ than all things. The world is finite; God is infinite.]

[Footnote 829: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. lxx.]

Schwegler affirms that, in physics, the Stoics, for the most part, followed Heraclitus, and especially "carried out the proposition that nothing incorporeal exists; every thing is essentially _corporeal_." The pantheism of Zeno is therefore "_materialistic._"[830] This is not a just representation of the views of the early Stoics, and can not be sustained by a fair interpretation of their teaching. They say that principles and elements differ from each other. Principles have no generation or beginning, and will have no end; but elements may be destroyed. Also, that elements have bodies, and have forms, _but principles have no bodies, and no forms_.[831] Principles are, therefore, _incorporeal._ Furthermore, Cicero tells us that they taught that the universal harmony of the world resulted from all things being "contained by one _Divine_ SPIRIT;"[832] and also, that reason in man is "nothing else but part of the _Divine_ SPIRIT merged into a human body."[833] It thus seems evident that the Stoics made a distinction between corruptible _elements_ (fire, air, earth, water) and incorruptible _principles_, by which and out of which elements were generated, and also between corporeal and incorporeal substances.

[Footnote 830: Schwegler's "History of Philosophy," p. 140.]

[Footnote 831: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. lxviii.]

[Footnote 832: "De Natura Deorum," bk. ii. ch. xiii.]

[Footnote 833: Ibid, bk. ii. ch. xxxi.]

On a careful collation of the fragmentary remains of the early Stoics, we fancy we catch glimpses of the theory held by some modern pantheists, that the material elements, "having body and form," are a vital transformation of the Divine substance; and that the forces of nature--"the generating causes or reasons of things" (logoi spermatikoi)--are a conscious transmutation of the Divine energy. This theory is more than hinted in the following passages, which we slightly transpose from the order in which they stand in Diogenes Laertius, without altering their meaning. "They teach that the Deity was in the beginning by _himself_".... that "first of all, he made the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth." "The fire is the highest, and that is called æther, in which, first of all, the sphere was generated in which the fixed stars are set...; after that the air; then the water; and the sediment, as it were, of all, is the earth, which is placed in the centre of the rest." "He turned into water the whole substance which pervaded the air; and as the seed is contained in the product, so, too, He, being the seminal principle of the world, remained still in moisture, making matter fit to be employed by himself in the production of things which were to come after."[834] The Deity thus draws the universe out of himself, transmuting the divine substance into body and form. "God is a being of a certain quality, having for his peculiar manifestation universal substance. He is a being imperishable, and who never had any generation, being the maker of the arrangement and order that we see; and who at certain periods of time _absorbs all substance in himself and then reproduces it from himself_."[835] And now, in the last analysis, it would seem as though every thing is resolved into _force_. God and the world are _power, and its manifestation_, and these are ultimately one. "This identification of God and the world, according to which the Stoics regarded the whole formation of the universe as but a period in the development of God, renders their remaining doctrine concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the world seemed to be permeated by the Divine life, and was regarded as the flowing out of this most perfect life through certain channels, until it returns, in a necessary circle, back to itself."[836]

[Footnote 834: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. lxviii., lxix.]

[Footnote 835: Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. lxx.]

[Footnote 836: Schwegler's "History of Philosophy," p. 141.]

The God of the Stoics is not, however, a mere principle of life vitalizing nature, but an _intelligent_ principle directing nature; and, above all, a _moral_ principle, governing the human race. "God is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil; having a foreknowledge of the world, and of all that is in the world."[837] He is also the gracious Providence which cares for the individual as well as for the whole; and he is the author of that natural law which commands the good and prohibits the bad. "He made men to this end that they might be happy; as becomes his fatherly care of us, he placed our good and evil in those things which are in our own power."[838] The Providence and Fatherhood of God are strikingly presented in the "Hymn of Cleanthes" to Jupiter--

[Footnote 837: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. lxxii.]

[Footnote 838: Marcus Aurelius, bk. iii. ch. xxiv.]

Most glorious of the immortal Powers above!
O thou of many names! mysterious Jove:
For evermore almighty! Nature's source!
Thou governest all things in their order'd course!
All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame,
E'en mortal creatures may address thy name;
For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,
Echo thy being with reflected birth--
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:
The universe, that rolls this globe around,
Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire;
The double-forked and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hands they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw
To one immense, inevitable law:
And, with the various mass of breathing souls,
Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation! all things bow
To thee: the universal monarch thou!

Nor aught is done without thy wise control,
On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,
Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind,
Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion, to thy sight,
Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.
Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul.
Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize
The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey;
But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray.
Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,
And the sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,
And their whole souls are centred in their sin.
But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given!
Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven!
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!
Father! disperse these shadows of the mind!
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;
Wherewith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honor to thyself repay;
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,
As well befits a mortal's lips to sing:
More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers can be,
Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.[839]

[Footnote 839: Sir C. A. Elton's version, published in "Specimens of Ancient Poets," edited by William Peters, A. M., Christ Church, Oxford.]

PSYCHOLOGY.

As in the world there are two principles, the passive and the active, so in the understanding there are two elements: a passive element--_sensation_, and an active element--_reason_.

All knowledge commences with the phenomena of sensation (aisthêsis). This produces in the soul an image (phantasia), which corresponds to the exterior object, and which Chrysippus regarded as a modification of the mind (alloiôsis).[840]

Associate with sensibility is thought--the faculty of general ideas--the orthos logos, or right reason, as the supreme power and the guiding light of humanity. This active principle is of divine origin, "a part or shred of the Divinity."

[Footnote 840: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. xxxiv.]

This "right reason," or "common reason," is the source and criterion of all truth; "for our individual natures are all parts of the universal nature," and, therefore, all the dictates of "common reason" are "identical with that right reason which pervades every thing, being the same with Jupiter, who is the regulator and chief manager of all things."

The fundamental canon of the logic of the Stoics, therefore, was that "what appears to all, that is to be believed, for it is apprehended by the reason, which is common and Divine."

It is needless to remark that the Stoics were compelled by their physiological theory to deny the proper immortality of the soul. Some of them seem to have supposed that it might, for a season, survive the death of the body, but its ultimate destination was absorption into the Divine essence. It must return to its original source.

ETHICS.

If reason be the great organizing and controlling law of the universe, then, to live conformable to reason is the great practical law of life. Accordingly, the fundamental ethical maxim of the Stoics is, "Live conformably with nature--that is, with reason, or the will of the universal governor and manager of all things."[841] Thus the chief good (eudaimonia) is the conformity of man's actions to reason--that is, to the will of God, "for nothing is well done without a reference to God."[842]

[Footnote 841: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.]

[Footnote 842: Marcus Aurelius, bk. iii. § II.]

It is obvious that this doctrine must lead to a social morality and a jurisprudence the very opposite of the Epicurean. If we must do that which is good--that is, that which is reasonable, regardless of all consequences, then it is not for the pleasurable or useful results which flow from it that justice should be practised, but because of its intrinsic excellence. Justice is constituted good, not by the law of man, but by the law of God. The highest pleasure is to do right; "this very thing is the virtue of the happy man, and the perfect happiness of life, when every thing is done according to a harmony of the genius of each individual to the will of the Universal Governor and Manager of all things."[843] Every thing which interferes with a purely rational existence is to be eschewed; the pleasures and pains of the body are to be despised. To triumph over emotion, over suffering, over passion; to give the fullest ascendency to reason; to attain courage, moral energy, magnanimity, constancy, was to realize true manhood, nay, "to be godlike; for they have something in them which is, as it were, a god"[844]

The sublime heroism of the Stoic school is well expressed in the manly precept, "Anechou"--_sustine_--endure. "Endure the sorrows engendered by the bitter struggle between the passions support all the evils which fortune shall send thee--calumny, betrayal, poverty, exile, irons, death itself." In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius this spirit seems to rise almost to the grandeur of Christian resignation. "Dare to lift up thine eyes to God and say, 'Use me hereafter to whatsoever thou pleasest. I agree, and am of the same mind with thee, indifferent to all things. Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me act what part thou wilt, either of a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.'"[845] "Show those qualities," says Marcus Aurelius, "which God hath put in thy power--sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity."[846]

[Footnote 843: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.]

[Footnote 844: Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. xliv.]

[Footnote 845: Arrian, "Diss. Epict.," bk. ii. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 846: "I read to-day part of the 'Meditations of Marcus Antonius' [Aurelius]. What a strange emperor! And what a strange heathen! Giving thanks to God for all the good things he enjoyed! In particular for his good inspirations, and for twice revealing to him, in dreams, things wherby he was cured of (otherwise) incurable distempers. I make no doubt but this is one of the 'many' who shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' while the 'children of the kingdom'--nominal Christians--are 'shut out.'"--Wesley's "Journal," vol. i, p. 353.]

Amid the fearful moral degeneracy of imperial Rome, Stoicism became the refuge of all noble spirits. But, in spite of its severity, and its apparent triumph over the feelings, it brought no real freedom and peace. "Stoical morality, strictly speaking, is, at bottom, only a slavish morality, excellent in Epictetus; admirable still, but useless to the world, in Marcus Aurelius." Pride takes the place of real disinterestedness. It stands alone in haughty grandeur and solitary isolation, tainted with an incurable egoism. Disheartened by its metaphysical impotence, which robs God of all personality, and man of all hope of immortality; defeated in its struggle to obtain purity of soul, it sinks into despair, and often terminates, as in the case of its two first leaders, Zeno and Cleanthes, and the two Romans, Cato and Seneca, in self-murder. "Thus philosophy is only an apprenticeship of death, and not of life; it tends to death by its image, _apathy_ and _ataraxy._"[847]

[Footnote 847: Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 439.]