The Stoic Writings. Nearly all the writings of the early Stoics have been lost. Only fragments have been preserved from the writings of other men like Cicero, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Diogenes Laertius, and these men do not always distinguish between early and later Stoicism. The principal source of our knowledge of early Stoicism is Diogenes Laertius. The Hymn to Zeus of Cleanthes is the most noteworthy fragment extant of the early period. Of the later Stoics of the Empire many writings have been saved: the ethical treatises and epistles of Seneca, the Diatribes and Encheiridion of Epictetus, and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The later Stoic writings transmit the teaching of the earlier leaders modified by many foreign influences. Such second-hand authorities as Cicero, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus, and the Aristotelian commentators give reports so vitiated that it is doubtful if they report any element belonging to the earlier teaching. The doctrine of the Stoics, since the time of Chrysippus, however, is known beyond peradventure.
The Stoics and Cynics. The Stoics tried to build up the life of the soul after the pattern of the virtuous Wise Man, whose outlines they borrowed from the transfigured and lofty form of Socrates. (Noack.) Their teaching is not merely a refinement and advance over the Cynic School as Epicureanism had been to the Cyrenaic School. Stoicism and Epicureanism used their sources in different ways. The Stoic would give up more than the Epicurean, and the negative side of his teaching is therefore greater; but in recompensehe offers more in the shape of a comprehensive metaphysics. The Cyrenaic doctrine of pleasure became the corner stone of Epicureanism. The Cynic sensualistic rigorism became in the Stoic teaching a negative and relatively unimportant doctrine. While the Stoic distinction of virtue was not unproductive, the most influential aspect of Stoicism was its dissemination of humane culture. Thus, in contrast with the Cynics, the Stoics had a deep interest in scientific theory. The Stoic, less than the Cynic, contrasted the individual with the world. The Stoics have a more intelligent, freer, and milder morality. To the Cynics, external things have no value; to the Stoics, they have both a positive and a negative value. Beneath these differences there is the same self-sufficiency in virtue, the same withdrawal within, the same moral strength of will, the same antithesis between good and evil. Stoicism was original, but not enough so to mark the beginning of a new epoch.
The Two Prominent Stoic Conceptions. There are two Stoic conceptions that rise prominently above all the rest of their teaching. One is the conception of personality, the other is the conception of Nature. Epicureanism built up the conception of personality, but it had no need of an objective principle of Nature; and indeed the Epicurean conception of personality seems to be only a clever adjustment and an avoidance of the problems of life, compared to the clear-cut, heroic, and vigorous Stoic conception of personality. Thus in Epicureanism there is one prominent conception, in Stoicism there are two.
These two Stoic principles stand side by side. The Stoic builds them up together, even though he fails tomake them entirely compatible. All the essential difficulties and all the excellencies of Stoicism lie in the juxtaposition of the conceptions of personality and Nature. In early Stoicism each conception is stated with great vigor. In later Stoicism their harmony is approximated by the modification of each. The result was an ethical dualism and a metaphysical monism.
The Conception of Personality. Against Epicureanism the Stoic fought for the dignity of the soul. The ideal personality of the Wise Man is the central point in Stoicism. Even more than Aristotle did the Stoic emphasize the unity and independence of the individual soul as contrasted to its particular states. For the first time in European thought does the soul become an independent factor to be reckoned with. The Stoic picture of the ideal personality is of a life completely sundered from outward conditions, free from earthly trammels, but at the same time the organ of universal law. Contemporaries asked the Stoics, How can such an ideal be a person? How can he live among his fellow men? How can he reconcile himself to human want? After setting forth this ideal during the 175 years of their first period, it is not strange that they were finally forced to modify it in response to practical demands. At this point we shall consider the original portrayal of the Wise Man.
1. The Stoic Psychology. The Stoic built his conception of personality upon a deep psychological analysis. The soul in the body is like the pneuma in the world (see p. [255]). Not only does the soul transform the excitations of the several sense organs into perceptions, but its distinguishing faculty is its power of transforming the excitations of the feelings into acts of will.This was called by the Stoics the assent of the reason, and is the distinguishing feature of the Stoic conception of personality. It established for the first time in history the independence of the personal soul. The Stoic felt keenly the antagonism between the reason and the senses, and he also felt that by estimating the senses as merely relative in value they would so much the more dignify the reason as the fundamental feature of the personality. While, therefore, all knowledge comes from the senses, the Stoic maintained that no knowledge exists in the senses by themselves. The assent of the reason is necessary to transform the sensations into true knowledge. The reason is not an aggregate of sensations, but an independent function of the personality. It transforms the sensations into perceptions, the perceptions into acts of will. The reason is therefore a kind of generating power of consciousness and is free from everything external. But in contrast to this free rational side is the irrational nature of man; for the reason is liable to suffer failure, when it allows itself to be hurried along to give assent to exciting causes. Then emotions arise, and emotions are failures, mental disturbances, and in chronic cases diseases. Man is not always able to defend himself against the excitations of his environment, but he can refuse to give the excitations his assent. He can refuse to allow the excitations to become emotions and to pour forth his life in passion. Man may be in the world and not of it. He may govern the world by controlling himself. The Wise Man is free from the emotions, and virtue consists in their absence. The virtuous man is self-sufficient in the proud consciousness that he can look upon pleasure as not a good and pain as not an evil.
What guide does the reason have in granting or refusing its assent to its perceptions from without? What is the criterion of the truth? The clearness of the perception—the clearness in the sense that the presentation lays hold of the mind and extorts its assent. The truth is the “irresistible presentation” or the “apprehending presentation.” Who can know the truth? The Wise Man. By what means? By sensation and preconception. By what sign? By the sign of its irresistible power. The Wise Man is perfectly free and perfectly necessitated—he never gives assent except to what constrains assent.
2. The Highest Good. What is then the Highest Good or happiness for such a personality? After such an analysis, what would the Stoic be likely to conceive to be the true ends of life? The very nature of the personality gives the answer. Personality is fundamentally rational activity which seeks to preserve itself and to gratify its own nature. The Highest Good is the law of its own rationality, and virtue consists in being rational. In reaching for the Highest Good man can transcend his particular faculties in his free obedience to his own reason; and the wholeness of his existence depends upon the wholeness of his deed. Thus is the inner activity whole in contrast to the partial outer activities. Inwardness attains complete independence and finds the depth of the soul. We are free and we are happy if the whole being goes out in contemplation of the world reason which is our reason, and if all the feelings that make us dependent on the world are excluded. Since the emotions place a false value on things, happiness demands a whole effort and ceaseless activity. We must not merely theorize, but thought must becomeconduct. Thought-action yields happiness. It does not matter whether man acts with reference to this or that, for external objects are neither good nor bad. The whole question is whether the reason controls the passions or not. If the reason controls, the end is good; if the passions control, the end is evil; all other ends are indifferent. The reason either does or does not rule, and an act is either good or not. Good is not relative, but absolute; and such relative matters as wealth, honor, and riches are matters of indifference. Even life itself is one of the indifferent things and may be taken when it does not serve the ends of reason. The Highest Good is that inner unity—that disposition—which is governed by a single principle.
The Stoic word for this ideal Good is apathy, just as the Epicurean word was ataraxy or imperturbability. Positively defined, it is virtue. Negatively defined, can we say it was passionlessness? This would not be quite correct. By apathy the Stoic means not absence of all feeling, but absence of control by the feelings. The Stoic was filled with joy, gratitude, serene confidence, and unwavering submission in regard to rational law. Apathy is not dull insensibility, but immovable firmness. It is absence of the emotions that render the man dependent on the world, but it is not absence of the reaching out of the soul for the divine. The Highest Good or Apathy is (1) intellectual resignation to the universe, (2) practical inner harmony, and (3) self-control. In seeking to be rational, man is following an impulse,—the impulse of self-preservation.
The Conception of Nature. In comparison with the Epicurean the position of the Stoic was peculiarly involved. The ideal imperturbability of the Epicurean wassimple in so far that it required nothing beyond itself. It was an individual matter and varied with the individual. But the Stoic ideal personality is based upon the reason, that is eternally one and the same. What is this absolute principle that gives to the human reason its absoluteness? What is the extent of the law of the reason that the human reason itself implies? Thus the Stoic needed to supplement his conception of personality and the Epicurean did not. Because his individualism was more rigorous, it needed the more to be supported. The Stoic principle of morality had to have its foundation in the absolute nature of things. This foundation could not be the politico-moral principle of Greek national life, for that existed no longer. It could not be a transcendent, supersensuous, or incorporeal principle, for his Cynic inheritance would forbid his looking beyond experience. The supplementary absolute principle of the Stoics must be an immanent principle, a living power in the world. A pantheistic conception of Nature took its place side by side with the Stoic conception of personality, and this conception of Nature became the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. For this the Stoics adopted the Logos doctrine of Heracleitus, which will be recalled as the doctrine of primal matter as rational, just, and fateful changingness. The Stoics were reinforced in this by Aristotle’s teleological philosophy of nature. Yet they tried to overcome the dualism of matter and Form as it existed in Aristotle’s teaching, and one feels that the Stoic pantheism was a conscious and avowed pantheism. The Stoic conception of Nature is that of a unitary, rational, and living whole, having no parts, but only determinate forms. Yet it cannot be called a hylozoism,like the doctrine of Heracleitus, for there Form and matter had not been distinguished. In the intervening years Form and matter had been separated, and the Stoic sought to put them together again. In comparison with the doctrine of the Old Schools, the Stoic teaching was (1) monistic, as against their dualism, (2) materialistic, as against their idealism, but (3) like them, it was teleological.