Chapter XI: Section TWO: Second Period: Dogmatism and Scepticism (1)

IN this second period, which precedes the Alexandrian philosophy, we have to consider Dogmatism and Scepticism—the Dogmatism which separates itself into the two philosophies, the Stoic and the Epicurean; and the third philosophy, of which both partake and which yet differs from them both, Scepticism. Along with this last we would take the New Academy, which has entirely merged in it—while in the Older Academy, Plato’s philosophy indubitably still maintained its purity. We saw at the close of the previous period the consciousness of the Idea, or of the Universal, which is an end in itself—a principle, universal indeed, but at the same time determined in itself, which is thus capable of subsuming the particular, and of being applied thereto. The application of universal to particular is here the relationship that prevails, for the reflection that from the universal itself the separation of the totality is developed, is not yet present. There always is in such a relationship the necessity of a system and of systematization; that is to say, one determinate principle must consistently be applied to the particular, so that the truth of all that is particular should be determined according to this abstract principle, and be at the same time likewise recognized. Now since this is what we have in so-called Dogmatism, it is a philosophizing of the understanding, in which Plato’s and Aristotle’s speculative greatness is no longer present.

In respect of this relationship, the task of Philosophy now comes to be summed up in the twofold question which we spoke of earlier (Vol. I. pp. 474, 475), and which has regard to a criterion of truth and to the wise man. At this point we may better than before, and also from a different point of view, explain the necessity for this phenomenon. For because truth has now become conceived as the harmony of thought and reality, or rather as the identity of the Notion, as the subjective, with the objective, the first question is what the universal principle for judging and determining this harmony is; but a principle through which the true is judged (κρίνεται) to be true, is simply the criterion. Yet because this question had only been formally and dogmatically answered, the dialectic of Scepticism, or the knowledge of the one-sidedness of this principle as a dogmatic principle, at once appeared. A further result of this mode of philosophizing is that the principle, as formal, is subjective, and consequently it has taken the real significance of the subjectivity of self-consciousness. Because of the external manner in which the manifold is received, the highest point, that in which thought finds itself in its most determinate form, is self-consciousness. The pure relation of self-consciousness to itself is thus the principle in all these philosophies, since in it alone does the Idea find satisfaction, just as the formalism of the understanding of the present so-called philosophizing seeks to find its fulfilment, the concrete which is opposed to this formalism, in the subjective heart, in the inward feelings and beliefs. Nature and the political world are certainly also concrete, but externally concrete; the arbitrary concrete is, on the other hand, not in the determinate universal Idea, but only in self-consciousness and as being personal. The second ruling determination is consequently that of the wise men. Not reason alone, but everything must be something thought, that is, subjectively speaking, my thought; that which is thought, on the contrary, is only implicit, that is to say, it is itself objective in so far as it appears in the form of the formal identity of thought with itself. The thought of the criterion as of the one principle is, in its immediate actuality, the subject itself; thought and the thinker are thus immediately connected. Because the principle of this philosophy is not objective but dogmatic, and rests on the impulse of self-consciousness towards self-satisfaction, it is the subject whose interests are to be considered. The subject seeks on its own account a principle for its freedom, namely, immovability in itself; it must be conformable to the criterion, _i.e._ to this quite universal principle, in order to be able to raise itself into this abstract independence. Self-consciousness lives in the solitude of its thought, and finds therein its satisfaction. These are the fundamental determinations in the following philosophies: the exposition of their main principles will come next, but to go into details is not advisable.

Although, as no doubt is the case, these philosophies, as regards their origin, pertain to Greece, and their great teachers were always Greeks, they were yet transferred to the Roman world; thus Philosophy passed into the Roman world and these systems in particular constituted under Roman rule the philosophy of the Roman world, in opposition to which world, unsuited as it was to the rational practical self-consciousness, this last, driven back into itself from external actuality, could only seek for reason in itself and could only care for its individuality—just as abstract Christians only care for their own salvation. In the bright Grecian world the individual attached himself more to his state or to his world, and was more at home in it. The concrete morality, the impulse towards the introduction of the principle into the world through the constitution of the state, which we see in Plato, the concrete science that we find in Aristotle, here disappear. In the wave of adversity which came across the Roman world, everything beautiful and noble in spiritual individuality was rudely swept away. In this condition of disunion in the world, when man is driven within his inmost self, he has to seek the unity and satisfaction, no longer to be found in the world, in an abstract way. The Roman world is thus the world of abstraction, where one cold rule was extended over all the civilized world. The living individualities of national spirit in the nations have been stifled and killed; a foreign power, as an abstract universal, has pressed hard upon individuals. In such a condition of dismemberment it was necessary to fly to this abstraction as to the thought of an existent subject, that is, to this inward freedom of the subject as such. As what was held in estimation was the abstract will of the individual ruler of the world, the inward principle of thought also had to be an abstraction which could bring forth a formal, subjective reconciliation only. A dogmatism erected on a principle made effectual through the form of the understanding could alone satisfy the Roman mind. These philosophies are thus conformable to the spirit of the Roman world, as indeed Philosophy in general ever stands in close connection with the world in its ordinary aspect (Vol. I. pp. 53, 54). The Roman world has, indeed, produced a formal patriotism and corresponding virtue, as also a developed system of law; but speculative philosophy could not proceed from such dead material—we could only expect good advocates and the morality of a Tacitus. These philosophies, always excepting Stoicism, also arose amongst the Romans in opposition to their ancient superstitions, just as now Philosophy comes forward in the place of religion.

The three principles of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism are necessary; in the first there is the principle of thought or of universality itself, but yet determined in itself; the abstract thought is here the determining criterion of the truth. There is opposed to thought, in the second place, the determinate as such, the principle of individuality, feeling generally, sensuous perception and observation. These two form the principles of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies. Both principles are one-sided and, as positive, become sciences of the understanding; just because this thought is not in itself concrete but abstract, the determinateness falls outside of thought and must be made a principle for itself; for it has an absolute right as against abstract thought. Besides Stoicism and Epicureanism, there is, in the third place, Scepticism, the negation of these two one-sided philosophies which must be recognized as such. The principle of Scepticism is thus the active negation of every criterion, of all determinate principles of whatever kind they be, whether knowledge derived from the senses, or from reflection on ordinary conceptions, or from thought. Thus the next result arrived at is that nothing can be known. Yet the imperturbability and uniformity of mind in itself, which suffers through nothing, and which is affected neither by enjoyment, pain, nor any other bond, is the common standpoint and the common end of all these philosophies. Thus however gloomy men may consider Scepticism, and however low a view they take of Epicureanism, all these have in this way been philosophies.

A. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STOICS.

We must, first of all, and in a general way, remark of Stoicism, as also of Epicureanism, that they came in the place of the philosophy of the Cynics and Cyrenaics as their counterpart, just as Scepticism took the place of the Academy. But in adopting the principle of these philosophies, they at the same time perfected it and elevated it more into the form of scientific thought. Yet because in them, just as in the others, the content is a fixed and definite one, since self-consciousness therein sets itself apart, this circumstance really puts an end to speculation, which knows nothing of any such rigidity, which rather abolishes it and treats the object as absolute Notion, as in its difference an unseparated whole. Hence with the Stoics, as also really with the Epicureans, instead of genuine speculation, we only meet with an application of the one-sided, limited principle, and thus we require in both to enter merely upon a general view of their principle. Now if Cynicism made reality for consciousness the fact of being immediately natural (where immediate naturalness was the simplicity of the individual, so that he is independent and, in the manifold movement of desire, of enjoyment, of holding many things to be reality, and of working for the same, really keeps up the external simple life) the Stoic elevation of this simplicity into thought consists in the assertion, not that immediate naturalness and spontaneity is the content and the form of the true Being of consciousness, but that the rationality of nature is grasped through thought, so that everything is true or good in the simplicity of thought. But while with Aristotle what underlies everything is the absolute Idea as unlimited and not set forth in a determinate character and with a difference—and its deficiency is only the deficiency which is present in realization, the not being united into one Notion—here the one Notion is undoubtedly set forth as real existence, and everything is related to it, and hence the requisite relation is undoubtedly present; but that in which everything is one is not the true. With Aristotle each conception is considered absolutely in its determination and as separate from any other; here the conception certainly is in this relation and is not absolute, but at the same time it is not in and for itself. Because thus the individual is not considered absolutely but only relatively, the whole working out is not interesting, for it is only an external relation. Likewise with Aristotle the individual only is taken into consideration, but this consideration is lost sight of by the speculative treatment adopted: here, however, the individual is taken up and the treatment is likewise external. This relation is not even consistent, if, as also happens, something such as nature is considered in itself; for the absolute falls outside of it, since its consideration is only a system of reasoning from indeterminate principles, or from principles which are only the first that come to hand.

As a contribution to the history of the philosophy of the Stoics, we first of all desire to mention the more eminent Stoics. The founder of the Stoic School is Zeno (who must be distinguished from the Eleatic); he belonged to Cittium, a town in Cyprus, and was born about the 109th Olympiad. His father was a merchant who, from his business visits to Athens, then, and for long afterwards, the home of Philosophy and of a large number of philosophers, brought with him books, particularly those of the Socratics, whereby a love and craving for knowledge was awakened in his son. Zeno himself travelled to Athens, and, according to some, he found a further motive to live for Philosophy, in that he lost all his possessions by a shipwreck. What he did not lose was the cultured nobility of his mind and his love of rational understanding. Zeno visited several sections of the Socratics, and particularly Xenocrates, a man belonging to the Platonic School, who, on account of the strictness of his morality and the austerity of his whole demeanour, was very celebrated. Thus he underwent the same ordeals as those to which the holy Francis of Assisi subjected himself, and succumbed to them just as little. This may be seen by the fact that while no testimony was given without oath in Athens, the oath was in his case dispensed with, and his simple word believed—and his teacher Plato is said often to have remarked to him that he might sacrifice to the Graces. Then Zeno also visited Stilpo, a Megaric, whom we already know about (Vol. I. p. 464), and with whom he studied dialectic for ten years. Philosophy was considered as the business of his life, and of his whole life, and not studied as it is by a student who hurries through his lectures on Philosophy in order to hasten on to something else. But although Zeno principally cultivated dialectic and practical philosophy, he did not, like other Socratics, neglect physical philosophy, for he studied very specially Heraclitus’ work on Nature, and finally came forward as an independent teacher in a porch called Poecile (στοὰ ποικίλη), which was decorated with the paintings of Polygnotus. From this his school received the name of Stoic. Like Aristotle his principal endeavour was to unite Philosophy into one whole. As his method was characterized by special dialectic skill and training, and by the acuteness of his argumentation, so he himself was distinguished, in respect of his personality, by stern morality, which resembles somewhat that of the Cynics, though he did not, like the Cynics, try to attract attention. Hence with less vanity his temperance in the satisfaction of his absolute wants was almost as great, for he lived on nothing but water, bread, figs and honey. Thus amongst his contemporaries Zeno was accorded general respect; even King Antigonus of Macedonia often visited him and dined with him, and he invited him to come to him in a letter quoted by Diogenes: this invitation, however, Zeno in his reply refused, because he was now eighty years of age. But the circumstance that the Athenians trusted to him the key of their fortress, speaks for the greatness of their confidence in him; indeed, according to Diogenes, the following resolution was passed at a meeting of the people: “Because Zeno, the son of Mnaseas, has lived for many years in our town as a philosopher, and, for the rest, has proved himself to be a good man, and has kept the youths who followed him in paths of virtue and of temperance, having led the way thereto with his own excellent example, the citizens decide to confer on him a public eulogy, and to present him with a golden crown, on account both of his virtue and his temperance. In addition to this he shall be publicly buried in the Ceramicus. And for the crown and the building of the tomb, a commission of five men shall be appointed.” Zeno flourished about the 120th Olympiad (about 300 B.C.) at the same time as Epicurus, Arcesilaus of the New Academy, and others. He died at a great age, being ninety-eight years of age (though some say he was only seventy-two), in the 129th Olympiad; for being tired of life, he put an end to it himself either by strangulation or by starvation—just because he had broken his toe.[121]

Amongst the succeeding Stoics Cleanthes must be specially singled out; he was a disciple and the successor of Zeno in the Stoa, and author of a celebrated Hymn to God, which Stobæus has preserved. He is well known by an anecdote told respecting him. It is said that he was called in accordance with the law before a court of justice in Athens to give an account of the means by which he maintained himself. He then proved that at night he carried water for a gardener, and by means of this occupation, earned as much as he required in order in the day to be in Zeno’s company—as to which the only point which is not quite comprehensible to us is how, even in such a way, philosophy, of all things, could be studied. And when for this a gratuity was voted to him from the public treasury, he refused it at Zeno’s instigation. Like his teacher, Cleanthes also died voluntarily, in his eighty-first year, by abstaining from food.[122]

Of the later Stoics there were many more who could be named as having been famous. More distinguished in science than Cleanthes was his disciple, Chrysippus of Cilicia, born Ol. 125, 1 (474 A.U.C.; 280 B.C.), who likewise lived in Athens, and who was specially active in promoting the wide cultivation and extension of the philosophy of the Stoics. His logic and dialectic were what contributed most largely to his fame, and hence it was said that if the gods made use of dialectic, they would use none other than that of Chrysippus. His literary activity is likewise admired, for the number of his works, as Diogenes Laërtius tells us, amounted to seven hundred and five. It is said of him in this regard that he wrote five hundred lines every day. But the manner in which his writings were composed detracts very much from our wonder at this facility in writing, and shows that most of his works consisted of compilations and repetitions. He often wrote over again respecting the very same thing; whatever occurred to him he put down on paper, dragging in a great variety of evidence. Thus he quoted almost entire books by other writers; and someone gave expression to the belief that if all that belonged to others were taken away from his books, only white paper would be left. But of course it is not so bad as all this, as we may see by all the quotations from the Stoics, where the name of Chrysippus is placed at the head, as it always is, and his conclusions and explanations are used by preference. His writings, of which Diogenes Laërtius mentions a long list, have, however, all been lost to us; so much is nevertheless correct, that he was the main constructor of the Stoic logic. While it is to be regretted that some of his best works have not come down to us, it is, perhaps, a good thing that all are not preserved; if we had to choose between having all or none, the decision would be a hard one. He died in the 143rd Olympiad (212 B.C.).[123]

In the period immediately following, Diogenes of Seleucia in Babylonia is a distinguished figure; Carneades, the celebrated Academic, is said to have learned dialectic from him, and he is also noteworthy because with this Carneades and Critolaus, a Peripatetic thinker, in Olympiad 156, 2 (598 A.U.C., or 156 B.C.) and in the time of the elder Cato, he was sent as Athenian ambassador to Rome—an embassy which first caused the Romans to make acquaintance with Greek philosophy, dialectic and rhetoric, in Rome itself. For those philosophers there gave lectures and discourses.[124]

Besides these, Panaetius is well known as having been Cicero’s instructor; the latter wrote his treatise, _De Officiis_, after Panaetius. Finally, we have Posidonius, another equally famous teacher, who lived for long in Rome in the time of Cicero.[125]

Later on we see the philosophy of the Stoics pass over to the Romans, that is to say, it became the philosophy of many Romans, though this philosophy did not gain anything as a science by so doing. On the contrary, as in the case of Seneca and the later Stoics, in Epictetus or Antoninus, all speculative interest was really lost, and a rhetorical and hortatory disposition shown, of which mention cannot be made in a history of Philosophy any more than of our sermons. Epictetus of Hierapolis in Phrygia, born at the end of the first century after Christ, was first of all the slave of Epaphroditus, who, however, freed him, after which he betook himself to Rome. When Domitian banished the philosophers, poisoners and astrologers from Rome (94 A.D.), Epictetus went to Nicopolis, in Epirus, and taught there publicly. From his lectures Arrian compiled the voluminous _Dissertationes Epicteteæ_, which we still possess, and also the manual ἐγχειρίδιον of Stoicism.[126] We still have the Meditations εἰς ἑαυτόν of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, in twelve books; he first of all ruled along with Lucius Aurelius Verus from 161 to 169 A.D., and then from 169 to 180 alone and he conducted a war with the Marcomanni. In his Meditations he always speaks to himself; these reflections are not, however, speculative in nature, being admonitions, such as that man should exercise himself in every virtue.

We have no other original works by the older Stoics. For the Stoic Philosophy, too, the sources on which we formerly could count are cut off. The sources from which a knowledge of the philosophy of the Stoics is to be derived are, however, well known. There is Cicero, who was himself a Stoic, though in his representation there is great difficulty in discovering how, for instance, the principle of Stoic morality is to be distinguished from that which constitutes the principle of the morality of the Peripatetics. And, more particularly, we have Sextus Empiricus, whose treatment is mainly theoretic, and is thus interesting from a philosophic point of view. For Scepticism has had to do with Stoicism more especially. But also Seneca, Antoninus, Arrian, the manual of Epictetus, and Diogenes Laërtius must really be called into council.

As regards the philosophy of the Stoics themselves, they definitely separated it into those three parts which we have already met with (Vol. I. p. 387, Vol. II. pp. 48, 49), and which will, generally speaking, be always found. There is Logic in the first place; secondly, Physics, or Natural Philosophy; and thirdly, Ethics, or the Philosophy of Mind, on the practical side especially. The content of their philosophy has, however, not much that is original or productive.

1. PHYSICS.

As regards the Physics of the Stoics, we may in the first place say that it does not contain much that is peculiar to itself, since it is rather a compendium of the Physics of older times, and more especially of that of Heraclitus. However, each of the three schools now being dealt with has had a very characteristic and definite terminology, which is more than can be altogether said of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Thus we must now make ourselves familiar with the particular expressions used and with their significance. The following is the essence of the Physics of the Stoics: The determining reason (λόγος) is the ruling, all-productive substance and activity, extended throughout all, and constituting the basis of all natural forms; this preponderating substance, in its rational effectuating activity, they call God. It is a world-soul endowed with intelligence, and, since they called it God, this is really Pantheism. But all Philosophy is pantheistic, for it goes to prove that the rational Notion is in the world. The hymn of Cleanthes is to this effect: “Nothing happens on earth without thee, O Dæmon, neither in the ethereal pole of the heavens, nor in the sea, excepting what the wicked do through their own foolishness. But thou knowest how to make crooked things straight, and thou orderest that which is without order, and the inimical is friendly to thee. For thus hast thou united everything into one, the good to the evil; thus one Notion (λόγος) is in everything that ever was, from which those mortals who are evil flee. How unhappy are they, too, who, ever longing to possess the good, do not perceive God’s universal law, nor listen thereto, the which if they but obeyed with reason, (σὺν νῷ) they would attain a good and happy life!”[127] The Stoics thus believed the study of nature to be essential, in order to know in nature its universal laws, which constitute the universal reason, in order that we might also know therefrom our duties, the law for man, and live conformably to the universal laws of nature. “Zeno,” according to Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 14), “holds this natural law to be divine, and believes that it has the power to dictate the right and prohibit what is wrong.” Thus the Stoics desired to know this rational Notion which rules in nature not altogether on its own account; and the study of nature was consequently to them rather a mere matter of utility.

If we are now to give some further idea of what these Physics are, we may say that the Stoics distinguish in the corporeal—although nature is only the manifestation of one common law—the moment of activity and that of passivity; the former is, according to Aristotle, active reason, or, according to Spinoza, _natura naturans_; the latter passive reason, or _natura naturata_. The latter is matter, substance without quality, for quality is, generally speaking, form, _i.e._ that which forms universal matter into something particular. This is indeed the reason likewise that with the Greeks quality is called τὸ ποιόν, just as we in German derive _Beschaffenheit_ from _Schaffen_—that which is posited, the negative moment. But the actuating, as the totality of forms, is, according to the Stoics, the Notion in matter; and this is God. (Diog. Laërt. VII. 134.)

As regards the further nature of these forms, these universal laws of nature, and the formation of the world, the Stoics have in the main adopted the ideas of Heraclitus, for Zeno studied him very particularly (_supra_, p. 239). They thus make fire the real Notion, the active principle which passes into the other elements as its forms. The world arises by the self-existent gods driving the universal material substance (οὐσίαν) out of the fire, through the air, into the water; and as in all generation the moisture which surrounds a seed comes first as the begetter of all that is particular, so that conception, which in this respect is called seed-containing (σπερματικός), remains in the water and then actuates the indeterminate Being of matter into the origination of the other determinations. The elements, fire, water, air and earth, are consequently primary. Respecting them the Stoics speak in a manner which has no longer any philosophic interest. “The coagulation of the denser parts of the world forms the earth; the thinner portion becomes air, and if this becomes more and more rarefied, it produces fire. From the combination of these elements are produced plants, animals, and other kinds of things.” The thinking soul is, according to them, of a similar fiery nature, and all human souls, the animal principle of life, and also plants, are parts of the universal world-soul, of the universal fire; and this central point is that which rules and impels. Or, as it is put, souls are a fiery breath. Sight, in the same way, is a breath of the ruling body (ἡγεμονικοῦ) transmitted to the eyes; similarly hearing is an extended, penetrating breath, sent from the ruling body to the ears.[128]

Respecting the process of nature we may further say this: Fire, Stobæus tells us (Eclog. phys. I. p. 312), is called by the Stoics an element in a pre-eminent sense, because from it, as the primary element, all else arises through a transformation, and in it, as in an ultimate, everything is fused and becomes dissolved. Thus Heraclitus and Stoicism rightly comprehended this process as a universal and eternal one. This has even been done by Cicero, though in a more superficial way; in this reflection he falsely sees the conflagration of the world in time and the end of the world, which is quite another matter. For in his work _De natura Deorum_ (II. 46) he makes a Stoic speak thus: “In the end (_ad extremum_) everything will be consumed by fire; for if all moisture becomes exhausted the earth can neither be nourished, nor can air return into existence. Thus nothing but fire remains, through whose reanimation and through God the world will be renewed and the same order will return.” This is spoken after the manner of the ordinary conception. But to the Stoics everything is merely a Becoming. However deficient this may be, God, as the fiery principle, is yet to them the whole activity of nature, and likewise the rational order of the same, and in this lies the perfect pantheism of the Stoic conception of nature. Not only do they call this ordering force God, but also nature, fate or necessity (εἱμαρμένην), likewise Jupiter, the moving force of matter, reason (νοῦν) and foresight (πρόνοιαν); to them all these are synonymous.[129] Because the rational brings forth all, the Stoics compare this impelling activity to a seed, and say: “The seed which sends forth something rational (λογικόν) is itself rational. The world sends forth the seeds of the rational and is thus in itself rational;” that is to say, rational both generally, in the whole, and in each particular existent form. “All beginning of movement in any nature and soul rises from a ruling principle, and all powers which are sent forth upon the individual parts of the whole proceed from the ruling power as from a source; so that each force that is in the part is also in the whole, because the force is distributed by the ruling power in it. The world embraces the seed-containing conceptions of the life which is in conformity with the conception,” _i.e._ all particular principles.[130] The Physics of the Stoics is thus Heraclitean, though the logical element is entirely at one with Aristotle; and we may regard it as being such. However, speaking generally, only those belonging to earlier times had a physical element in their philosophy: those coming later neglected Physics entirely and kept alone to Logic and to Ethics.

The Stoics again speak of God and the gods according to the popular manner of regarding them. They say that “God is the ungenerated and imperishable maker of all this disposition of things, who after certain periods of time absorbs all substance in Himself, and then reproduces it from Himself.”[131] There no definite perception is reached, and even the above relation of God, as absolute form, to matter has attained no developed clearness. The universe is at one time the unity of form and matter, and God is the soul of the world; at another time, the universe, as nature, is the Being of the constituted matter, and that soul is antagonistic to it, but the activity of God is a disposition of the original forms of matter.[132] This opposition is devoid of the essentials of union and division.

Thus the Stoics remain at the general conception that each individual is comprehended in a Notion, and this again in the universal Notion, which is the world itself. But because the Stoics recognized the rational as the active principle in nature, they took its phenomena in their individuality as manifestations of the divine; and their pantheism has thereby associated itself with the common ideas about the gods as with the superstitions which are connected therewith (p. 235), with belief in all sorts of miracles and with divination—that is to say, they believe that in nature there are intimations given which men must receive through divine rites and worship. Epicureanism, on the contrary, proceeds towards the liberation of men from this superstition to which the Stoics are entirely given over. Thus Cicero, in his work _De divinatione_, has taken the most part of his material from them, and much is expressly given as being the reasoning of the Stoics. When, for example, he speaks of the premonitory signs given in connection with human events, all this is conformable with the Stoic philosophy. The fact that an eagle flies to the right, the Stoics accepted as a revelation of God, believing that thereby it was intimated to men what it was advisable for them to do in some particular circumstances. Just as we find the Stoics speaking of God as having universal necessity, to them God, as Notion, has hence a relation to men and human ends likewise, and in this respect He is providence; thus they now arrived at the conception of particular gods also. Cicero says in the work quoted above (II. 49): “Chrysippus, Diogenes and Antipater argued thus: If gods exist, and if they do not let men know beforehand what is to happen in the future, they cannot love men, or else they themselves do not know what stands before them in the future, or they are of opinion that it does not signify whether man knows it or not, or they consider such a revelation beneath the dignity of their majesty, or they cannot make it comprehensible to men.” All this they refute, for amongst other things they say that nothing can exceed the beneficence of the gods, &c. Thus they draw the conclusion that “the gods make known to men the future”—a system of reasoning in which the entirely particular ends of individuals also form the interests of the gods. To make men know and comprehend at one time and not at another, is an inconsistency, _i.e._ an incomprehensibility, but this very incomprehensibility, this obscurity, is the triumph of the common way of regarding religions affairs. Thus in the Stoics all the superstitions of Rome had their strongest supporters; all external, teleological superstition is taken under their protection and justified. Because the Stoics started from the assertion that reason is God (it certainly is divine, but it does not exhaust divinity), they immediately made a bound from this universal to the revelation of that which operates for the sake of individual ends. The truly rational is doubtless revealed to men as the law of God; but the useful, what is in conformity with individual ends, is not revealed in this truly divine revelation.

2. LOGIC.

In the second place, as to the intellectual side of the philosophy, we must first of all. consider the principle of the Stoics in answering the question of what the true and rational is. In regard to the source of our knowledge of truth, or of the criterion, which in those times used to be discussed (Vol. I. p. 474, Vol. II. p. 233), the Stoics decided that the scientific principle is the conception that is laid hold of (φαντασία καταληπτική), for the true as well as for the good; for the true and good are set forth as content or as the existent. Thus a unity of apprehending thought and Being is set forth in which neither can exist without the other; by this is meant not sensuous conception as such, but that which has returned into thought and become proper to consciousness. Some of the older Stoics, amongst whom we certainly find Zeno, called this criterion the very truth of reason (ὀρθὸς λόγος). Ordinary conception on its own account (φαντασία) is an impression (τύπωσις), and for it Chrysippus used the expression alteration (ἐτεροίωσις).[133] But that the conception should be true, it must be comprehended; it begins with feeling, whereby in fact the type of another is brought into us; the second step is that we should transform this into part of ourselves, and this first of all occurs through thought.

According to Cicero’s account (Academ. Quæst. IV. 47), Zeno illustrated the moments of this appropriation by a movement of the hand. When he showed the open palm he said that this was a sensuous perception; when he bent the fingers somewhat, this was a mental assent through which the conception is declared to be mine; when he pressed them quite together and formed a fist, this was comprehension (κατάληψις), just as in German we speak of comprehension [Begreifen] when by means of our senses we lay hold of anything in a similar way; when he then brought the left hand into play and pressed together that fist firmly and forcibly, he said that this was science, in which no one but the wise man participated. This double pressure, my pressing with the other hand that which is grasped, is said to signify conviction, my being conscious of the identity of thought with the content. “But who this wise man is or has been the Stoics never say,” adds Cicero; and of this we shall afterwards have to speak in greater detail. In fact, the matter is not made clear through this gesticulation of Zeno’s. The first action, the open hand, is sensuous apprehension, immediate seeing, hearing, &c.; the first motion of the hand is then, speaking generally, spontaneity in grasping. This first assent is likewise given by fools; it is weak, and may be false. The next moment is the closing of the hand, comprehension, taking something in; this makes the ordinary conception truth, because the ordinary conception becomes identical with thought. By this my identity with this determination is indeed set forth, but this is not yet scientific knowledge, for science is a firm, secure, unchangeable comprehension through reason or thought, which is that which rules or directs the soul. Midway between scientific knowledge and folly is the true Notion as the criterion, although as yet it is not itself science; in it thought gives its approbation to existence and recognizes itself, for approbation is the harmony of a thing with itself. But in scientific knowledge a perception of the first elements and determinate knowledge through thought of the object is contained. Thus the ordinary conception as apprehended is thought; scientific knowledge is the consciousness of thought, the knowledge of that harmony.

We may also give our assent to these conclusions of the Stoics with their various stages, since in them there is a perception which is undoubtedly true. In this we have an expression of the celebrated definition of the truth, by which it is made the harmony of object and consciousness; but at the same time it is well to remark that this is to be understood simply, and not as indicating that consciousness had a conception, and that on the other side stood an object, which two had to harmonize with one another, and hence that a third was necessarily brought into existence which had to compare them. Now this would be consciousness itself, but what this last can compare is nothing more than its conception, and—not the object, but—its conception again. Consciousness thus really accepts the conception of the object; it is by this approbation that the conception actually receives truth—the testimony of mind to the objective rationality of the world. It is not, as is ordinarily represented, that a round object here impresses itself upon wax, that a third compares the form of the round and of the wax and, finding them to be similar, judges that the impress must have been correct, and the conception and the thing have harmonized. For the action of thought consists in this, that thought in and for itself gives its approbation and recognizes the object as being in conformity with itself; this it is in which lies the power of truth—or approbation is the expression of this harmony, or judgment itself. In this, say the Stoics, the truth is contained; it is an object which is likewise thought, so that the thought that gives its assent is the ruling thought which posits the harmony of subject with content. The fact that anything is or has truth is thus not because it is (for this moment of Being is only ordinary conception), but the fact that it is, has its power in the approbation of consciousness. But this thought alone and for itself is not the truth, nor is the truth as such contained in it, for the Notion requires the objective element and is only the rational consciousness respecting the truth. But the truth of the object itself is contained in the fact that this objective corresponds to thought, and not the thought to the objective; for this last may be sensuous, changeable, false, and contingent, and thus it is untrue for mind. This is the main point as far as the Stoics are concerned, and even if we discover the Stoic speculative doctrines from their antagonists better than from their originators and advocates, yet from them, too, this idea of unity proceeds; and while both sides of this unity are opposed, both are necessary, but thought is essential reality. Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VIII. 10) understands this thus: “The Stoics say that as regards the perceptible and that which is thought some things alone are true; what is felt, however, is not immediate (έξ εὐθείας), for it becomes true for the first time through its relation to the thought that corresponds to it.” Thus neither is immediate thought the true, excepting in so far us it corresponds to the Notion and is known through the working out of rational thought.

This general idea is the only one which is interesting in the Stoics, but even in this very principle, limitations are found to be present. It merely expresses the truth as subsisting in the object, as thought of, yet for that very reason it is still a very formal determination, or not in itself the real Idea. From this point of view Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. X. 183) examines the Stoics, and he considers and discusses them in all sorts of ways. The most striking thing that he says is what relates to the following. The fact that anything is, rests in its being thought—the fact that it is thought in something being there; the one is the pre-supposition of the other. That is to say, the Stoics assert that a thing exists, not because it is, but through thought; but consciousness for its existence requires another, for thought is likewise one-sided. In this criticism by Sextus it is indicated that thought requires an object as an external to which it gives its approbation. There can be no talk of its being here indicated that the thinking mind in order to exist as consciousness does not require the object; this is really inherent in its conception. But the “this” of the object as an external is only a moment which is not the only one or the essential. It is the manifestation of mind, and mind exists only in that it appears; this therefore must come to pass in it, that it must have its object as external and give its approbation to it—that is, it must withdraw from this relationship into itself and therein recognize its unity. But likewise, having gone into itself, it has now from itself to beget its object and give itself the content which it sends forth from itself. Stoicism is only this return of mind into itself, positing the unity of itself and the object, and recognizing the harmony; but not the going forth again to the extension of the real knowledge of a content from itself. We do not find Stoicism getting any farther, for it stops short at making the consciousness of this unity its object, without developing it in the slightest; thus reason remains the simple form which does not go on to the distinction of the content itself. Hence the formalism of this celebrated standard, and of the standpoint from which all truth of content is judged, rests farther in the fact that the thought of thought, as what is highest, finds this content indeed conformable to itself and appropriates it, since it transforms it into the universal, but its determinations are given. For if thought predominates, still it is always universal form alone. On account of this universality thought yields nothing but the form of identity with itself; the ultimate criterion is thus only the formal identity of the thought which discovers harmony. But it may be asked, with what? For there no absolute self-determination, no content that proceeds from thought as such is to be found; and hence everything may harmonize with my thought. The criterion of the Stoics is consequently only the principle of contradiction; yet when we remove the contradiction from absolute reality, it is indeed self-identical, but for that very reason empty. The harmony must be a higher one; there must be harmony with self in what is other than self, in content, in determination; and thus it must be harmony with harmony.

In accordance with this recognition of the principle of the Stoics, both their logic and their morality is judged; neither the one nor the other arrives at being immanent free science. We have already remarked (p. 241) that they also occupied themselves with logical definitions, and since they made abstract thought the principle, they have brought formal logic to great perfection. Logic is hence to them logic in the sense that it expresses the activity of the understanding as of conscious understanding; it is no longer as with Aristotle, at least in regard to the categories, undecided as to whether the forms of the understanding are not at the same time the realities of things; for the forms of thought are set forth as such for themselves. Then along with this comes in, for the first time, the question respecting the harmony of thought and object or the demand that an appropriate content of thought be shown. However, since all given content may be taken into thought and posited as something thought without therefore losing its determinate character, and this determinate character contradicts and does not support the simplicity of thought, the taking of it up does not help at all; for its opposite may also be taken up and set forth as something thought. The opposition is thereby, however, only in another form; for instead of the content being in outward sensation as something not pertaining to thought and not true, as it formerly was, it now pertains to thought, but is unlike it in its determinateness, seeing that thought is the simple. Thus what was formerly excluded from the simple Notion, now comes into it again; this separation between activity of the understanding and object must indeed be made, but likewise the unity in the object as such has to be shown, if it is only something thought. Hence Scepticism cast up this opposition more especially to the Stoics, and the Stoics amongst themselves had always to improve on their conceptions. As we have just seen (p. 250) in Sextus Empiricus, they did not quite know whether they should define conception as impression or alteration, or in some other way. Now if this conception is admitted into that which directs the soul, into pure consciousness, Sextus further asks (since thought _in abstracto_ is the simple and self-identical which, as incorporeal, is neither passive nor active), How can an alteration, an impression, be made on this? Then the thought-forms are themselves incorporeal. But, according to the Stoics, only the corporeal can make an impression or bring about an alteration.[134] That is to say, on the one hand, because corporeal and incorporeal are unlike they cannot be one; and, on the other, incorporeal thought-forms, as capable of no alteration, are not the content, for this last is the corporeal only.

If the thought-forms could in fact have attained the form of content, they would have been a content of thought in itself. But as they were they had value as laws of thought (λεκτά)[135] merely. The Stoics indeed had a system of immanent determinations of thought, and actually did a great deal in this direction; for Chrysippus specially developed and worked out this logical aspect of things, and is stated to have been a master in it (_supra_, pp. 240, 241). But this development took a very formal direction; there are the ordinary well-known forms of inference, five of which are given by Chrysippus, while others give sometimes more and sometimes fewer. One of them is the hypothetical syllogism through remotion, “When it is day it is light, but now it is night and hence it is not light.” These logical forms of thought are by the Stoics held to be the unproved that requires no proof; but they are likewise only formal forms which determine no content as such. The wise man is specially skilful in dialectic, we are told by the Stoics, for all things, both physical and ethical, are perceived through a knowledge of logic.[136] But thus they have ascribed this perception to a subject, without stating who this wise man is (p. 250). Since objective grounds by which to determine the truth are wanting, the ultimate decision is attributed to the will of the subject; and this talk about the wise man consequently has its ground in nothing but the indefiniteness of the criterion, from which we cannot get to the determination of content.

It would be superfluous to speak further of their logic any more than of their theory of judgments, which in part coincides with it, and in part is a grammar and a rhetoric; by it no real scientific content can be reached. For this logic is not, like Plato’s dialectic, the speculative science of the absolute Idea; but, as formal logic, as we saw above (p. 254), it is science as the firm, secure, unalterable comprehension of reasons, and stops short at the perception of the same. This logical element, whose essence consists pre-eminently in escaping to the simplicity of the conception to that which is not in opposition to itself nor falls into contradiction, obtains the upper hand. This simplicity, which has not negativity and content in itself, requires a given content which it may not abrogate—but consequently it cannot thus attain to a genuine “other” through itself. The Stoics have constituted their logic often in the most isolated fashion; the principal point that is established here is that the objective corresponds to thought, and they investigated this thought more closely. If in a manner it is quite correct to say that the universal is the true, and that thought has a definite content that must also be concrete, the main difficulty, which is to deduce the particular determination from the universal, so that in this self-determination it may remain identical with itself, has not been solved by the Stoics: and this the Sceptics brought to consciousness. This is the point of view most important in the philosophy of the Stoics; it thus showed itself in their physics also.

3. ETHICS.

Since the theory of mind, the doctrine of knowledge, came before us in the investigation of the criterion, we have, in the third and last place, to speak of the morality of the Stoics, to which is due their greatest fame, but which does not rise above this formal element any more than what precedes, although it cannot be denied that in presenting it they have taken a course which seems very plausible to the popular conception, but which in fact is to a great extent external and empiric.