Poverty, on the other hand, does not change the disposition of the temperate man for the worse[[988]] There is nothing distressing or painful about it,[[989]] for Crates and Diogenes were poor and yet passed their life in ease.[[990]] It is no harder to endure old age in poverty than in wealth, but all depends upon the disposition.[[991]] Poverty deprives the life of no positive good, but furnishes the opportunity of gaining good,[[992]] since it is conducive to the contemplative life of philosophy, while wealth is an obstacle to this.[[993]] It is the poor, rather than the wealthy, who have leisure.[[994]] They are also obliged to be strong (καρτερεῖν), while the wealthy become effeminate, since they have no impetus to work.[[995]] Thus poverty, when accompanied with justice, should be more highly honored than wealth.[[996]] The author concludes that it is therefore best to despise wealth and turn to the life of philosophy, for this develops generosity instead of stinginess, and contentment instead of insatiety. Such a life uses what is on hand, and lives content with present blessings (τοῖς παροῦσι).[[997]] The marked contrast between this ascetic philosophy of poverty and the saner teaching of Plato, who was as much opposed to poverty as to excessive wealth, is patent.
STOICS
The Stoics were the natural descendants in thought of the Cynics, whom they resemble closely in their attitude toward external goods. According to their definition, a good must have an unconditioned value (absolutum, αὐτελές). Whatever exists merely for the sake of something else, or is of value only in comparison to something else, is not a good.[[998]] A similar doctrine was held concerning evil. Thus spiritual goods were counted to be the only true wealth,[[999]] and he who had the right attitude toward all,[[1000]] and used all rightly, was thought to be the spiritual owner of all.[[1001]]
Zeno, the founder of the school,[[1002]] classified both wealth and poverty among the so-called “indifferents” (ἀδιάφορα),[[1003]] as neither good nor evil per se. Like the Cynics, he eulogized poverty, though not to such an extreme degree.[[1004]] He went with them only so far as to insist that wealth and poverty have no value, except in relation to the proper spiritual attitude.[[1005]]
In his argument that temples are not especially holy places, since they are the work of artisans (βαναύσων), Zeno exhibits the common negative attitude of the philosophers toward manual labor.[[1006]] His doctrine on money and exchange was also the negative teaching of the moralist, though his statements on these matters have special reference to an ideal future.[[1007]] His attitude on the problem of distribution is not altogether clear, though he wrote a Republic,[[1008]] in which he seems to have presented some communistic ideas. Like his followers, he looked to the time when the whole world should be one state, where artificial differences were no more, and all men were brothers.[[1009]] His state is utopian and anarchistic, without temple, court, gymnasium, money, or exchange. All are to wear the same clothing, and there shall be no artificial modesty.[[1010]] Community of wives, at least for the wise, was also probably among his utopian schemes,[[1011]] though it is very unlikely that he held the doctrine in the crass form as reported.[[1012]] His state is somewhat suggestive of the Christian ideal, as a unitary whole, a world-cosmos, united by love.[[1013]]
There is a peculiar mixture of individualistic and social conceptions in the philosophy of the Stoics. In their pictures of an ideal future world-state, they advanced beyond Plato and other thinkers, who limited their communities to the small city-state. In calling their state a “cosmos” also, they gave a positive social content to the narrow individualism of the Cynics.[[1014]] Moreover, as seen above, their ideal undoubtedly contained some communistic elements. However, according to the fundamental tenet of Stoicism, as expressed by Zeno,[[1015]] that only the wise can be free and citizens, we are still faced with the old duality and anti-socialistic ideal. The Stoics, like the Cynics, were after all essentially individualistic, and were probably believers in private ownership, though they dreamed of a future golden age of altruism, when private property would be no longer necessary.[[1016]]
Chrysippus, the greatest of the Stoics,[[1017]] continued and expanded the principle that virtue is the only absolute good, and that all other things are indifferents, depending for their worth upon right use.[[1018]] But since the wise alone are capable of right use of externals, they alone are truly wealthy.[[1019]] They are wealthy, even though beggars, and noble though slaves.[[1020]] They are not eager for wealth[[1021]] yet they are good economists, since they know the proper source,[[1022]] time, method, and extent of money-making. The worthless, on the other hand, are most needy, even though wealthy.[[1023]] Chrysippus seems to have advanced still farther, in teaching the negative doctrine that wealth is an evil, since it may come from an evil source,[##] an idea suggestive of the modern theory of “tainted money.” Naturally, he with the other Stoics, was in sympathy with the Socratics, in objecting to the use of one’s knowledge for purposes of money-making.[[1024]]
The cosmopolitan attitude of the Stoics caused them to be opposed to the theory of slavery as a natural institution.[[1025]] They taught that enforced service is no evidence of slavery,[[1026]] but that the real slaves are the ignoble and foolish.[[1027]] The wise, on the other hand, alone are free, though they are slaves to countless masters.[[1028]]
Chrysippus, like Zeno, probably had dreams of a future ideal state, where the highest eternal law would rule and individual strivings would be lost in the care for the common weal.[[1029]] If he taught family communism, it was doubtless in a Platonic form.[[1030]]
Utopian social theories after the time of Aristotle were by no means limited to those of Zeno and Chrysippus. As Souchon has observed,[[1031]] the period between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the second centuries was especially favorable to such speculation. The skeptical criticism of the Sophists had prepared the following generations to call in question the most elementary social principles. Ideal states, such as those of Phaleas and Plato, had opened the way for future imitations. The conquests of Alexander had broadened the vision of the Greek, so that he no longer thought in terms of Plato’s circumscribed city, but rather in terms of a world-state. Moreover, the utter political confusion and unstable economic conditions of the time aroused the more serious-minded to dream of an ideal past or golden age; to idealize the simple, “natural” life of the so-called “pious” barbarian nomads,[[1032]] or even of the animal world, as opposed to the “artificial” conditions of civilization; and to exaggerate the virtues and communistic character of the old Spartan constitution.[[1033]] The social theories were largely Stoic in tendency, and thus present a strange combination of individualistic and communistic ideas.[[1034]]