THE STOICS — A FRAGMENT.
The Stoics were one of the four sects of philosophy recognized and conspicuous at Athens during the three centuries preceding the Christian era and during the century or more following. Among these four sects, the most marked antithesis of ethical dogma was between the Stoics and the Epikureans.
The Stoics agreed with the Peripatetics (anterior to Epikurus, not specially against him) that the first principle of nature is (not pleasure or relief from pain, but) Self-preservation or Self-love; in other words, the natural appetite or tendency of all creatures is, to preserve their existing condition with its inherent capacities, and to keep clear of destruction or disablement. This appetite (they said) manifests itself in little children before any pleasure or pain is felt, and is moreover a fundamental postulate, pre-supposed in all desires of particular pleasures, as well as in all aversions to particular pains. We begin by loving our own vitality; and we come, by association, to love what promotes or strengthens our vitality; we hate destruction or disablement, and come (by secondary association) to hate whatever produces that effect.
This doctrine associated, and brought under one view, what was common to man not merely with the animal, but also with the vegetable world; a plant was declared to have an impulse or tendency to maintain itself, without feeling pain or pleasure. Aristotle (in the tenth Book of the Ethica) says that he will not determine whether we love life for the sake of pleasure, or pleasure for the sake of life; for he affirms the two to be essentially yoked together and inseparable: pleasure is the consummation of our vital manifestations. The Peripatetics, after him, put pleasure down to a lower level, as derivative and accidental. The Stoics went farther in the same direction — possibly from antithesis against the growing school of Epikurus.
The primary officium (in a larger sense than our word duty) of man is (they said) to keep himself in the State of Nature; the second or derivative officium is to keep to such things as are according to nature, and to avert those that are contrary to nature; our gradually increasing experience enables as to discriminate the two. The youth learns, as he grows up, to value bodily accomplishments, mental cognitions and judgments, good conduct towards those around him, — as powerful aids towards keeping up that state of nature. When his experience is so far enlarged as to make him aware of the order and harmony of nature and human society, and to impress upon him the comprehension of this great idéal, his emotions as well as his reason becomes absorbed by it. He recognizes this as the only true Bonum or Honestum, to which all other desirable things are referable; as the only thing desirable for itself and in its own nature. He drops or dismisses all these prima naturæ that he had begun by desiring. He no longer considers any of them as worthy of being desired in itself, or for its own sake.
While, therefore, (according to Peripatetics as well as Stoics) the love of self and of preserving one’s own vitality and activity is the primary element, intuitive and connate, to which all rational preference (officium) was at first referred, they thought it not the less true that in process of time, by experience, association, and reflection, there grows up in the mind a grand acquired sentiment or notion, a new and later light, which extinguishes and puts out of sight the early beginning. It was important to distinguish the feeble and obscure elements from the powerful and brilliant after-growth; which indeed was fully realized only in chosen minds, and in them hardly before old age. This idea, when once formed in the mind, was The Good — the only thing worthy of desire for its own sake. The Stoics called it the only good, being sufficient in itself for happiness; other things being not good, nor necessary to happiness, but simply preferable or advantageous when they could be had: the Peripatetics recognized it as the first and greatest good, but said also that it was not sufficient in itself; there were two other inferior varieties of good, of which something must be had as complementary (what the Stoics called præposita or sumenda).[1] Thus the Stoics said about the origin of the Idea of Bonum or Honestum, much the same as what Aristotle says about ethical Virtue. It is not implanted in us by nature; but we have at birth certain initial tendencies and capacities, which, if aided by association and training, enable us (and that not in all cases) to acquire it.
[1] Aristotle and the Peripatetics held that there were tria genera bonorum: (1) Those of the mind (mens sana); (2) Those of the body; and (3) External advantages. The Stoics altered this theory by saying that only the first of the three was bonum; the others were merely præposita or sumenda. The opponents of the Stoics contended that this was an alteration in words rather than in substance.
The earlier Stoics laid it down that there were no graduating marks below the level of wisdom: all shortcomings were on a par. Good was a point, Evil was a point; there were gradations in the præposita or sumenda (none of which were good), and in the rejecta or rejicienda (none of which were evil), but there was no more or less good.
A distinction was made by Epictetus and other Stoics between things in our power and things not in our power. In our power are our opinions and notions about objects, and all our affections, desires, and aversions: not in our power are our bodies, wealth, honour, rank, authority, &c., and their opposites; though, in regard to these last, it is in our power to think of them as unimportant. With this distinction we may connect the arguments between the Stoics and their opponents as to what is now called the Freedom of the Will. But we must first begin by distinguishing the two questions. By things in our power, the Stoics meant things that we could do or acquire if we willed: by things not in our power, they meant things that we could not do or acquire if we willed. In both cases, the volition was assumed as a fact: the question what determined it, or whether it was non-determined, i. e., self-determining, was not raised in the antithesis. But it was raised in other discussions between the Stoic theorist Chrysippus, and various opponents. These opponents denied that volition was determined by motives, and cited the cases of equal conflicting motives (what is known as the Ass of Buridan) as proving that the soul includes in itself, and exerts, a special supervenient power of deciding action in one way or the other — a power not determined by any causal antecedent, but self-originating, and belonging to the class of agency that Aristotle recognizes under the denomination of automatic, spontaneous (or essentially irregular and unpredictable). Chrysippus replied by denying not only the reality of this supervenient force said to be inherent in the soul, but also the reality of all that Aristotle called automatic or spontaneous agency generally. Chrysippus said that every movement was determined by antecedent motives; that in cases of equal conflict the exact equality did not long continue, because some new but slight motive slipped in unperceived and turned the scale on one side or the other.[2] Here, we see, the question now known as the Freedom of the Will is discussed, and Chrysippus declares against freedom, affirming that volition is always determined by motives.
[2] See Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, xxiii. p. 1045.