A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

1. In the first place, Nature is an all-pervading World-Being. It is God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” It contains in itself all cosmic phenomena, and processes, past, present, and future. It is the World-ground and the World-mind, and yet it is all-in-all. It is the productive and formative power, the vitalizing principle. In general, it is the creative and guiding reason; in particular, it is Providence or divine government. It is the unswerving whole in which the single events of history take place. To the Stoics the cosmic Reason was so apparent in Nature that purpose appeared to them in everything. In their hands the great teleological conception of Aristotle’s immanent purposiveness sank to the petty purposiveness for human beings and for the gods. Yet it is no wonder that this conception of an all-pervasive deity became a religion to the Stoics and raised their moral code to the region of the sublime. The world is Fate so far as the minutest movements are determined. Nature is Providence so far as those determinations are full of purpose. Nature is in every part perfect and without blemish.

2. In the second place, Nature is an all-compelling law. Nature is an inviolable necessity, an inevitable destiny, that holds all phenomena in complete causalconnection. Yet this destiny only proves the complete purpose of the whole. The Stoic seized upon the central principle of Democritus,—which the Epicureans had overlooked,—the supremacy of law. “The doctrine of Democritus passed over to the Epicureans only so far as it was atomism and mechanism; with regard to the deeper and more valuable principle of the universal reign of law in Nature,his legacy passed to the Stoics.”[35] There is no such thing as chance; everything is caused. In Epicureanism one finds the doctrine of necessity, but the necessity comes from the atoms themselves. In Stoicism the necessity resides in the living activity of the whole. A living activity! Herein the Stoic conception differs from the Democritan teaching. The necessity is a living necessity, the destiny a living destiny.

3. In the third place, Nature is matter. On the theoretical side Stoicism agrees with Epicureanism only at one point,—both were materialistic. The materialism of both these New Schools got a disproportionate prominence because it had to be defended against the attacks of the Academy and the Lyceum. The materialism of the Epicureans was a mere adoption of a theory; the materialism of the Stoics was only one aspect of its supplementary basis. Nevertheless, to the Stoic matter alone is real, because it alone acts and is acted upon. Everything is matter,—nature-objects, God and the soul, and even the qualities, forces, and relations between material bodies. The Stoics regarded the presence and interchange of the qualities of things as the appearance and intermingling of bodies in these things.

There can be no doubt about the materialism of the Stoic teaching, although both material and spiritualattributes are ascribed to God in a way that is startling. The Heracleitan conception of fire as the primary substance is the Stoic conception of God. God is fire, air, ether, and most commonly the atmospheric currents which pervade all things. But God is also the World-soul, the World-mind, the Cosmic-reason, the universal Law, Nature, Destiny, Providence. He is a perfect, happy, and kind Being. In single statements these aspects are often combined and God is described as the Fiery Reason of the world, the Mind in matter, the reasonable Air-currents. The Stoic equation is Nature ＝ Matter ＝ Fire ＝ Reason ＝ Fate ＝ Providence ＝ God.

The Stoics followed Heracleitus also in their conception of the development of the present world from the cosmic fire. “In all points of detail their views on what we call physical science are contemptible.They contained not one iota of scientific thinking.”[36] They followed Aristotle, however, in their description of the elements and their teleological arrangements.

The primitive substance changes by its own inner rational law into force and matter. Force is the World-soul, the pneuma or warm breath, which pervades all things. Matter is the World-body, and is water and earth. In cosmic periods the primitive fire is destined to re-absorb the world of variety into itself and then consume it in a universal catastrophe.

The most important feature in the Stoic materialism is the conception of pneuma, or the force into which the original substance is differentiated. This is the World-soul. Nature is thus conceived as dynamical. The Stoic word for the World-soul is translated by various expressions, as “creative reason,” “generative powers,”“formative fire-mind.” It penetrates all things and dominates all as their active principle. Through it the universe is one, not a plurality of parts. The pneuma is the life of the universe. Its motion is spontaneous; its development is teleological. The pneuma is an extraordinarily condensed conception, containing as it does suggestions from Heracleitus’ Logos, Anaxagoras’ Nous, Democritus’ fire-atoms, and Aristotle’s Energeia.

The human being has a constitution analogous to the universe. Man is the microcosm and the universe the macrocosm. The soul of man is the pneuma which holds his body together, and it is an emanation from the divine pneuma. Mental states—thought and emotions—are air currents. Virtue is the tension of the atmospheric substance of the soul. The material, yet divine, pneuma constitutes man’s reason, causes his activities, is seated in his breast. Since the pneuma is a body, it disconnects itself from the human corpse at death, has a limited immortality, and returns to the cosmic pneuma at the conflagration of the world.

The Conceptions of Nature and Personality supplement each other. Thus fundamentally the personality is identical with the cosmos—it is reason. To turn the matter about, by reason or “nature” the Stoic means two things that are essentially one. He means the reason of man, or the reason of the world; to “live according to nature” is to live according to the nature of man or according to the nature of the world. The life of the Wise Man as a harmony with physical nature is a harmony with itself as well. The antithesis to “nature” or “reason” is sensuous nature. What we speak of as the natural impulses were not “natural” at all in the Stoic teaching.

“Nature” as universal is the creative cosmic power acting for ends. Coördination with this constitutes morality. It is a willing obedience to eternal necessity. The “fool” acts according to his sensations and impulses, and therefore against “nature.” But the Wise Man, by withdrawing within himself, is his own independent master because he is acting universally. “Nature” is the life-unity of the human soul with the world reason. True individual morality is therefore universal morality, complete humanity, universal rationality. To obey “nature” is to develop the essential germ in one’s self.