"I put myself in the hands of a Stoic," writes Justin Martyr, "and I stayed a long time with him, but when I got no further in the matter of God—for he did not know himself and he used to say this knowledge was not necessary—I left him."[[157]] Other men did not, like Justin, pursue their philosophic studies, and when they found that, while the Stoic's sense of truth would not let him ascribe personality to God, all round there were definite and authoritative voices which left the matter in no doubt, they made a quick choice. What authority means to a man in such a difficulty, we know only too well.
The Stoics in some measure felt their weakness here. When they tell us to follow God, to obey God, to look to God, to live as God's sons, and leave us not altogether clear what they mean by God, their teaching is not very helpful, for it is hard to follow or look to a vaguely grasped conception. They realized that some more definite example was needed. "We ought to choose some good man," writes Seneca, "and always have him before our eyes that we may live as if he watched us, and do everything as if he saw."[[158]] The idea came from Epicurus. "Do everything, said he, as if Epicurus saw. It is without doubt a good thing to have set a guard over oneself, to whom you may look, whom you may feel present in your thoughts."[[159]] "Wherever I am, I am consorting with the best men. To them, in whatever spot, in whatever age they were, I send my mind."[[160]] He recommends Cato, Lælius, Socrates, Zeno. Epictetus has the same advice. What would Socrates do? is the canon he recommends.[[161]] "Though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates."[[162]] "Go away to Socrates and see him ... think what a victory he felt he won over himself."[[163]] Comte in a later day gave somewhat similar advice. It seems to show that we cannot do well without some sort of personality in which to rest ourselves.
Plutarch's criticism
When once this central uncertainty in Stoicism appeared, all the fine and true words the Stoics spoke of Providence lost their meaning for ordinary men who thought quickly. The religious teachers of the day laid hold of the old paradoxes of the school and with them demolished the Stoic Providence. "Chrysippus," says Plutarch, "neither professes himself, nor any one of his acquaintances and teachers, to be good (spoudaîon). What then do they think of others, but precisely what they say—that all men are insane, fools, unholy, impious, transgressors, that they reach the very acme of misery and of all wretchedness? And then they say that it is by Providence that our concerns are ordered—and we so wretched! If the Gods were to change their minds and wish to hurt us, to do us evil, to overthrow and utterly crush us, they could not put us in a worse condition; for Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit no greater degree either of misery or unhappiness."[[164]] Of course, this attack is unfair, but it shows how men felt. They demanded to know how they stood with the gods—were the gods many or one? were they persons or natural laws[[165]] or even natural objects? did they care for mankind? for the individual man? This demand was edged by exactly the same experience of life which made Stoicism so needful and so welcome to its followers. The pressure of the empire and the terrors of living drove some to philosophy and many more to the gods—and for these certainty was imperative and the Stoics could not give it.
It is easy, but not so profitable as it seems, to find faults in the religion of other men. Their generation rejected the Stoics, but they may not have been right. If the Stoics were too hasty in making reason into a despot to rule over the emotions, their contemporaries were no less hasty in deciding, on the evidence of emotions and desires, that there were gods, and these the gods of their fathers, because they wished for inward peace and could find it nowhere else. The Stoics were at least more honest with themselves, and though their school passed away, their memory remained and kept the respect of men who differed from them, but realized that they had stood for truth.
Chapter II Footnotes:
[[1]] Hist. i, 2.
[[2]] Tac. Ann. iv, 33, sic converso statu neque alia re Romana quam si unus imperitet.
[[3]] Hdt. iii, 80. Cf. Tac. A. vi, 48, 4, vi dominationis convulsus et mutatus.
[[4]] Suetonius, Gaius, 29.