Like other philosophies Stoicism had embraced many subjects—logic, including dialectic and rhetoric, physical science, including cosmology and theology, and ethics. But by the first century of the Roman Empire it had become almost exclusively a philosophy of moral and religious edification, well calculated to steel men against the distress and trouble of that age. Its great representatives in this last period were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, whose works are still a source of strength for many thoughtful men.
Let us now consider briefly the system of the Stoics. Our theme confines us chiefly to the moral and religious sides of their philosophy; but this is only a slight limitation, for true to the teachings of the Cynics, who had greatly influenced the founder of the school, throughout their history the Stoics laid much emphasis on ethics, that is, on the art of a righteous and virtuous life. They were never so much concerned with speculation as to the nature of virtue as with its practice. To them virtue was man’s highest aim, and by it they meant righteousness in the practical relations of life. They defined it as a condition of the soul in which the soul is in continuous harmony with itself. Virtue they subdivided into the four chief elements of intelligence, discretion, courage, and justice. Some also recognized subordinate virtues, but these I name were the four that made up the supreme excellence. Furthermore the Stoics, like Socrates and the Cynics, identified virtue with knowledge and regarded the ideal philosopher as the one who had attained to true and complete wisdom and consequently to perfect virtue. Therefore the ideal of the wise man became the very center of the Stoic doctrine. He was thought to combine in himself all perfection, and as Seneca says, differs from God only by being mortal. As I have already observed, the early Stoics had fixed an absolute gulf between the perfect wise man and the unwise; like the Cynics they had declared that virtue once attained could not be lost; but the practical good sense of a later age modified these extreme views and taught that there were degrees in virtue, and that the most that the ordinary man could do was daily to advance and make progress toward his goal. As Seneca says: “I am not yet wise, nor shall I ever be. Do not ask me to be equal to the best but rather to be better than the base. This is enough for me—to take away daily something from my faults and daily to reject my errors.”[225] That man might attain to virtue, according to the Stoic, he must free himself from the world and its influences, through the exercise of his will he must strive to attain to freedom from all excess of feeling and passion. The extremist said that he must raise himself to a position where he was entirely free from passion, where he had attained to complete ἀπάθεια. The milder Stoics held the view that the wise man would not be one who felt no passion or desire, but rather one in whom virtue overmastered the passions. The mastery, whether complete or partial, all agreed was to be attained by the exercise of the will; therefore man must regard as wholly indifferent to him all things that are not within the control of that faculty. On this point Epictetus discourses most interestingly.[226] He points out that the materials we employ in life are indifferent to us, neither good nor bad; they are like the dice with which we play our game. But like the gamester we must try to manage life dexterously; whatever happens we must say: “Externals are not within my power; choice is. Where then shall I seek good and evil? Why, within, in what is my own.” And then he continues, pointing out that we must count nothing good or evil, profitable or hurtful, or of any concern to us, that is controlled by others. In tranquillity and calm we must accept what life brings, concerned only with what actually depends on the will of each one of us. We must act in life as we do in a voyage: the individual can choose the pilot, the sailors, and the hour of his departure; after that he must meet quietly all that comes, for he has done his part; and if a storm arise, he must face with indifference disaster or safety, for these matters are quite beyond the control of his will. So sickness and health, abundance and need, high position or the loss of station are things which my will cannot control. Therefore to me as a philosopher they are indifferent; I must have no anxiety about them; they really are not my affair. But my thoughts and my acts are matters that I can control, and in them I must find all my concern. The external circumstances, the acts of others, do not touch me, but my own acts, my own relations, my own inner life are things to which I must give all of my attention. So the Stoic reasoned, holding that virtue was quite sufficient for happiness, and that it made man master of his world. Thus we see that to the doctrine of virtue, which the Cynics had magnified, the Stoics had added the vitalizing principle of the operation of man’s will, and thereby had made the pursuit of wisdom, which to them was identical with virtue, a powerful means of moral and spiritual edification.
But when the Stoic discoursed of virtue and wisdom, what did he conceive the highest aim of man to be? “To live in accord with Nature,” was the answer which the followers of Zeno usually gave. By that they meant that man must bring himself into accord with that Nature which rules all things; that he must make his will and reason agree with the universal will and reason of which in truth they are a part. Others said that one must live in harmony with himself. But as we shall presently see, their definition was essentially the same as that of their fellows, for to the Stoic man was in himself an epitome of the cosmos.
In their explanation of the universe the Stoics held to a materialism which they borrowed from the teachings of Heraclitus, who had maintained that only matter had any existence whatever; therefore their system was in theory a materialistic monism, but with their monistic principle they combined an idea which in reality they had derived from Aristotle, apparently without realizing the possible consequence to their view that matter alone exists. Although holding that everything is material, they recognized in all things the presence of an active and a passive principle, the active principle forming and directing, the other being formed and directed, so that by the operation of the active principle upon the passive all the phenomena of the world come into being. The passive principle corresponded to Aristotle’s material, while the active principle included both his efficient and final causes. To their active principle the Stoics gave all the characteristics that Heraclitus had given to his λόγος, reason, or Anaxagoras to his νοῦς, mind. In short they attributed to it all the characteristics of reason and intelligence, so that in spite of their argument that the active principle was no less material than the passive, that it was the element of fire or vapor or both, it was inevitable that in practice their philosophy should ultimately tend toward a dualism and that the ancient conflict of matter and mind, of body and soul, should have its place in their teaching. They thought that the operative principle, fire, the divine reason, expresses itself in every part of the universe, that everything which exists is permeated by this divine spirit and directed by it. It is nothing less than the world-reason, God, which begets all things; so that they called it λόγος σπερματικός, that is, the reason that contains within itself the germs of all things that are to be. Now since man is of course a part of the cosmos, the Stoic argued that in him the world-reason naturally expresses itself; it is that which guides him, in fact it is his reason, the directing portion of his soul. And it is the possession of this soul, itself a part of the universal reason, which makes it possible for man to live in accord with Nature, for he attains that aim whenever his soul is in agreement with the universal soul which is its source. In this way the Stoic, for all his materialism, emphasized the divine nature of man and the community of human reason with God.
The pantheistic character of this philosophy is now evident. The world-reason, God, whatever the Stoic might call it, is all, embraces all within itself, and permeates all. This conception is in marked contrast to the teachings of Aristotle and the later Platonists, who conceived of God as transcendent, removed from the world about us. We have here the doctrine of the immanence of God, in whom all things live and move and have their being, because the world-reason is the principle on which all life and action directly depend. In this doctrine of the immanence of God the Stoics brought together again the worlds of matter and of reason which Plato had separated; and in the pantheistic character of this teaching they established a belief which later fitted in with the general course of pagan thought under the Roman Empire, when philosophy and religion were at one in recognizing the existence in the world of but a single divine principle, although all systems, including Stoicism, found a way to provide for the multitude of gods which popular belief demanded.
The Stoic theology then is in technical language a materialistic pantheism, and the world is only a mode of God. Such abstractions are difficult to grasp and have no personal meaning for the common man. But in practice the Stoic thought and spoke of God as a personality. Nowhere is this feeling expressed with so much devotion as in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus; the language is largely that of poetic tradition, but the thought is not that of common polytheism:
Most glorious of immortals, many named, powerful over all, Zeus, thou author of all nature, guiding all with law, Hail to thee. Thee ’tis right all mortals should address, For from thee men derive their race, they who alone Of all things mortal, living, creeping on the ground, Have gift of speech. So will I hymn thee, and thy power forever sing. For thee this entire cosmos, circling earth around, Obeys where’er thou leadest, and ’tis gladly ruled by thee. Such servant hast thou in thy hands invincible, The two-edged thunderbolt, ever living flame. For by its strokes are all things in nature wrought; With it thou dost direct the common law, which throughout all Forever moves, with every gleam commingled, great and small. ’Tis this hath made thee supreme king o’er all; For naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God, Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep, Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.[227]
But some of you have doubtless remembered that Fate (εἱμαρμένη) plays a large part in Stoicism, that the Stoic writers describe it as the cause that works through all things and brings all things to pass.[228] We must therefore consider what the Stoic meant by Fate, how he explained the existence of evil, and what provision he made for the freedom of the will. Fate was identified with reason or with what we call natural law; and since the Stoic held that it does not operate in a mechanical way, but is directed by reason to the best possible ends, it followed that Fate became identical with Providence (πρόνοια).[229] This world then for the Stoic is the best of all possible worlds. Yet the question will inevitably be asked as to why it is that evil can exist in such a world, in which a particular Providence rules all things for the best. We have already seen that Cleanthes held that God directed all things but the deeds of the wicked:
Naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God, Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep, Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.
For the most part however the Stoics did not attempt to place evil outside the domain of Fate, but boldly maintained that the existence of good is inconceivable without the existence of its opposite, evil. They taught that many of the things which are ordinarily reckoned evils by men were nothing of the sort; what we call physical evils, for example, were for them not evils, because they could not affect the wise man, the philosopher; or if they affected him, they could serve only as discipline, and therefore contribute to good ends. Man has within him the possibility of good; he must also have the possibility of evil, and therefore he must possess the freedom of choice without which goodness or evil has no moral value. Evil therefore like the good must be part of a world in which God rules all things to the best and wisest ends.