Roman Stoicism / being lectures on the history of the Stoic philosophy with special reference to its development within the Roman Empire

by Edward Vernon Arnold

In the last of the passages we are introduced to an ethical paradox of the highest importance to Stoicism: that good and evil are set in the will and the intention, and are not dependent upon the action[65].

Originality of Cleanthes.

99. To the ancients Cleanthes was the faithful disciple of Zeno. Persaeus, Aratus, and others had turned aside from the direct pursuit of philosophy, and their contact with science and politics might easily sully the purity of their philosophic creed. Herillus had adopted Academic doctrine, Aristo had fallen back into Cynism, Dionysius had actually seceded to the party of pleasure. It might seem that the far-reaching sweep of Zeno’s intellect had no real hold on his companions. But Cleanthes at least stood firm by the old landmarks. We must not suppose from this that he was a man of no originality[66]; his language and his style at least are his own. Nor on the other hand can we go all the way with some recent writers, who attribute to him exclusively large parts of the Stoic system[67]. Our authorities commonly refer either to Zeno alone, or to Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus jointly, as vouching for accepted Stoic doctrine; and we are hardly entitled to lay great stress on the comparatively few fragments of which the authorship is assigned exclusively to Cleanthes, as evidence for the independence of his teaching; especially as we can in many instances see that our authorities delight in attributing a difference of meaning to the Stoic masters, when in reality there is nothing more to be found than a difference of phrasing[68]. It is however clear that Stoicism did not assume its complete form in the hands of its first propagator; and to a limited extent we can see the directions in which his teaching was amplified by his successors.

Physics of Cleanthes.

100. Cleanthes took a special interest in the physical speculations of Heraclitus, on whose writings he composed four books[69], and in particular in the bearing of his speculations upon the nature of the deity. The belief in the dualism of God and matter, of the Word and the world, is attributed to Cleanthes as distinctly as to Zeno[70]; but on the other hand the conception of an overruling unity is much more pronounced in the later writer[71]. Hence from the first Cleanthes endeavours to give a wider meaning to the primary fire of Heraclitus, the creative fire of Zeno. For this fire he proposed the new term ‘flame’ (φλόξ)[72]; at other times he identified it with the sky[73], with the sun[74], and with the principle of heat[75]; and finally adopted the term ‘spirit’ (πνεῦμα, spiritus), which has ever since held its place in the discussion of natural theology. This term appears to have been at first intended to combine the conceptions of the creative fire and of the Logos[76], but it gradually came to have distinctive associations of its own. Like fire, ‘spirit’ is to the Stoics a substance, stuff, or body akin to the element of air, but associated with warmth and elasticity; it is conceived as immanent in the universe and penetrating it as the deity; immanent in the human body and penetrating it as the soul[77]. The elasticity of spirit is measured by its ‘tension’ (τόνος, intentio), by means of which its creative power pushes forward from the centre to the circumference: as for instance in the human body walking is effected by ‘spirit exercising tension towards the feet[78].’ The theory of ‘tension’ has an immediate application to ethics. When the soul has sufficient tension to perform its proper work, it operates according to the virtues of Wisdom, Justice, Courage, and Soberness; but when the tension is relaxed, the soul becomes disordered and is seized upon by the emotions[79].

Theology of Cleanthes.

101. To Cleanthes also it fell to explain more fully the government both of the universe and of the individual. Zeno indeed is said to have used the term ἡγεμονικόν (principale, principatus)[80], which we may translate by ‘ruling power,’ or shortly (following the Latin) by ‘principate[81],’ for the highest power of the human soul; Cleanthes sought a similar principle in the universe also, and is said to have found it in the sun[82]. By thus using the term in a double sense he implies the analogy which is expressed by the correlative terms ‘macrocosm’ and ‘microcosm,’ and which leads up to the definition of God as the ‘soul of the universe[83].’ Cleanthes further speaks of the universe itself as god[84]; but before describing him as a pantheist it is well to consider that this is only one form out of many in which he expresses his creed. He was also the first to give the four proofs of the existence of the deity upon which all discussions of the ‘evidences of Natural Religion’ have been based down to the present day, and which we shall further discuss in a later chapter[85].

The pious zeal of Cleanthes was not without a touch of bigotry, destined to have serious consequences in the final developments of Stoicism, and to reappear in the history of the middle ages with distressing intensity; he was bitterly opposed to the novel heliocentric theory of the universe as an impiety[86].

Weakness of Stoicism.