But we also see that, while declaring this opinion, Chrysippus does not employ the terms Necessity or Freedom of the Will; neither did his opponents, so far as we can see: they had a different and less misleading phrase. By freedom, Chrysippus and the Stoics meant the freedom of doing what a man willed, if he willed it. A man is free as to the thing that is in his power, when he wills it: he is not free as to what is not in his power, under the same supposition. The Stoics laid great stress on this distinction. They pointed out how much it is really in a man’s power to transform or discipline his own mind — in the way of controlling or suppressing some emotions, generating or encouraging others, forming new intellectual associations, &c.; how much a man could do in these ways, if he willed it, and if he went through the lessons, habits of conduct, and meditations, suitable to produce such an effect. The Stoics strove to create in a man’s mind the volitions appropriate for such mental discipline, by depicting the beneficial consequences resulting from it, and the misfortune and shame inevitable, if the mind were not so disciplined. Their purpose was to strengthen the governing reason of his mind, and to enthrone it as a fixed habit and character, which would control by counter suggestions the impulse arising at each special moment — particularly all disturbing terrors or allurements. This, in their view, is a free mind; not one wherein volition is independent of all motive, but one wherein the susceptibility to different motives is tempered by an ascendant reason, so as to give predominance to the better motive against the worse. One of the strongest motives that they endeavoured to enforce, was the prudence and dignity of bringing our volitions into harmony with the schemes of Providence; which (they said) were always arranged with a view to the happiness of the Kosmos on the whole. The bad man, whose volitions conflict with these schemes, is always baulked of his expectations, and brought at last against his will to see things carried by an over-ruling force, with aggravated pain and humiliation to himself: while the good man, who resigns himself to them from the first, always escapes with less pain, and often without any at all. As a portion of their view concerning Providence it may here be mentioned that the earlier Stoics, Zeno and Chrysippus, entertained high reverence for the divination, prophecy, and omens that were generally current in the ancient world. They considered that these were the methods whereby the gods were graciously pleased to make known beforehand revelations of their foreordained purposes. Herein lay one among the marked points of contrast between Stoics and Epikureans.
We have thus seen that in regard to the doctrine called in modern times the Freedom of the Will (i.e., that volitions are self-originating and unpredictable), the Stoic theorists not only denied it, but framed all their Ethics upon the assumption of the contrary. This same assumption of the contrary, indeed, was made also by Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epikurus; in short, by all the ethical teachers of antiquity. All of them believed that volitions depended on causes; that, under the ordinary conditions of men’s minds, the causes that volitions generally depended upon are often misleading and sometimes ruinous; but that, by proper stimulation from without and meditation within, the rational causes of volition might be made to overrule the impulsive. Plato, Aristotle, Epikurus, not less than the Stoics, wished to create new fixed habits and a new type of character. They differed, indeed, on the question what the proper type of character was; but each of them aimed at the same general end — a new type of character, regulating the grades of susceptibility to different motives. And the purpose of all and each of these moralists precludes the theory of free-will, i.e., the theory that our volitions are self-originating and unpredictable.
While the Epikureans declined, as much as possible, interference in public affairs, the Stoic philosophers urged men to the duties of active citizenship.[3] Chrysippus even said that the life of philosophical contemplation (such as Aristotle preferred and accounted godlike) was to be placed on the same level with the life of pleasure; though Plutarch observes that neither Chrysippus nor Zeno ever meddled personally with any public duty: both of them passed their lives in lecturing and writing. The truth is that both of them were foreigners residing at Athens, and at a time when Athens was dependent on foreign princes. Accordingly, neither Zeno nor Chrysippus had any sphere of political action open to them: they were, in this respect, like Epictetus afterwards, but in a position quite different from Seneca, the preceptor of Nero, who might hope to influence the great imperial power of Rome, and from Marcus Antoninus, who held that imperial power in his own hands.
[3] Tacitus says of the Stoics (Ann. xiv. 57): ‘Stoicorum secta, quæ turbidos et negotiorum appetentes facit.’
Marcus Antoninus — not only a powerful emperor, but also the most gentle and amiable man of his day — talks of active beneficence both as a duty and a satisfaction. But in the creed of the Stoics generally, active beneficence did not occupy a prominent place. They adopted the four Cardinal Virtues — Wisdom, or the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance — as part of their plan of the virtuous life, the life according to Nature. Justice, as the social virtue, was placed above all the rest. But the Stoics were not strenuous in requiring more than Justice, for the benefit of others beside the agent. They even reckoned compassion for the sufferings of others as a weakness, analogous to envy for the good fortune of others.
The Stoic recognised the gods (or Universal Nature, equivalent expressions in his creed) as managing the affairs of the world, with a view to producing as much happiness as was attainable on the whole. Towards this end the gods did not want any positive assistance from him; but it was his duty and his strongest interest, to resign himself to their plans, and to abstain from all conduct tending to frustrate them. Such refractory tendencies were perpetually suggested to him by the unreasonable appetites, emotions, fears, antipathies, &c., of daily life; all claiming satisfaction at the expense of future mischief to himself and others. To countervail these misleading forces by means of a fixed rational character built up through meditation and philosophical teaching, was the grand purpose of the Stoic ethical creed. The emotional or appetitive self was to be starved or curbed, and retained only as an appendage to the rational self; an idea proclaimed before in general terms by Plato, but carried out into a system by the Stoics, though to a great extent also by the Epikureans.
The Stoic was taught to reflect how much that appears to be desirable, terror-striking, provocative, &c., is not really so, but is made to appear so by false and curable associations. And, while he thus discouraged those self-regarding emotions that placed him in hostility with others, he learnt to respect the self of another man as well as his own. Epictetus advises to deal mildly with a man that hurts us either by word or deed; and advises it upon the following very remarkable ground:— “Recollect that in what he says or does, he follows his own sense of propriety, not yours. He must do what appears to him right, not what appears to you: if he judges wrongly, it is he that is hurt, for he is the person deceived. Always repeat to yourself, in such a case: The man has acted on his own opinion.�
The reason here given by Epictetus is an instance, memorable in ethical theory, of respect for individual dissenting conviction, even in an extreme case; and it must be taken in conjunction with his other doctrine, that damage thus done to us unjustly is really little or no damage, except so far as we ourselves give pungency to it by our irrational susceptibilities and associations. We see that the Stoic submerges, as much as he can, the pre-eminence of his own individual self, and contemplates himself from the point of view of another, as only one among many. But he does not erect the happiness of others into a direct object of his own positive pursuit, beyond the reciprocities of family, citizenship, and common humanity. The Stoic theorists agreed with Epikurus in inculcating the reciprocities of Justice between all fellow-citizens; and they even went farther than he did, by extending the sphere of such duties beyond the limits of city, so as to comprehend all mankind. But as to the reciprocities of individual Friendship, Epikurus went beyond the Stoics in the amount of self-sacrifice and devotion that he enjoined for the benefit of a friend.