CHAPTERI.THE STOIC SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
Ἀνακάμπτων δὲ ἐν τῇ ποικίλῃ στοᾷ τῇ καὶ Πεισιανακτείᾳ καλουμένῃ, ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς γραφῆς τῆς Πολυγνώτου, ποικίλῃ, διέθετο τοὺς λόγους... Προσῄεσαν δὴ λοιπὸν ἀκούοντες αὐτοῦ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Στωϊκοὶ ἐκλήθησαν, καὶ οἱ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ὁμοίως, πρότερον Ζηνώνειοι καλούμενοι.
Diog. Laert.vit. Phil.Lib.VII.6, 7.
Zeno was born at Cittium, a small city in the island of Cyprus, founded by Phœnicians, but inhabited by Greeks. His father, who was a merchant, finding his son attracted to the study of philosophy, allowed him to follow his bent. From Athens, whither he had often occasion to go for commercial purposes, the father frequently brought home for his son many writings of the Socratic school of philosophers. Zeno read these with great eagerness and was enchanted with the views which they unfolded. When he was about thirty years of age he made a voyage, probably of business and pleasure combined, to the city which was at once the home of the philosophers who had so delighted him by their works, and a great centre of trade. The story goes that he was shipwrecked on the coast and lost a valuable cargo of Phœnician purple which he had brought with him. Others say he did not lose his property when he first came to Athens, but was, on the contrary, abounding with wealth. The former version of the story would account to those who questioned the disinterestedness of his conduct, for his having attached himself to a sect that professed to despise riches. On his first arrival, havingread, at a bookseller’s stall, a few pages of Xenophon’sMemorabilia, he formed a high opinion of the author of a work which so pleased him, and asked the bookseller where such men were to be found. Crates, the Cynic, happened to pass at the time, and the bookseller replied, “Follow that man.” Zeno acted on the advice, placed himself under the Cynic philosopher’s instruction, and enrolled himself among his disciples; but he did not long remain so. He became disgusted with the manner of the sect, which he found too gross and unrefined for his taste; though at the same time he highly admired their general principles and spirit. Besides, the activity of his mind forbad him to abstain from all scientific enquiry, and indifference to science was a marked characteristic of the Cynics. He became a disciple of the Megaric doctrine, and thought to learn the nature and causes of things. He attended the school of Stilpo, the chief teacher of practical philosophy among the Megaric succession, who declared that the sovereign good was impassivity (ἀπάθεια). Zeno was pleased with the teaching of this school. To Crates, his former master, who, being angry at his desertion, endeavoured to draw him by force from his new teacher, he exclaimed, “You may seize my body, but Stilpo has laid hold of my soul.” Becoming tired of this teacher after some years, he turned to Diodorus Cronus, who taught him Dialectics, and to Philo; both of these being contemporary Megarics with Stilpo. He also studied under Xenocrates and Polemo, who were expositors of Platonic philosophy; and from the Academics he learnt much, for we can perceive a germ of Stoicism in the Platonic philosophy. But he found much in their teaching also contradictory to his own theories. When he came to Polemo, that teacher, with an insight into his disposition,said to him, “I am no stranger to your Phœnician arts, Zeno; I see that you intend slily to creep into my garden and steal my fruit.”
Being now, after twenty years’ study, well informed as to what others could teach him, as he was either dissatisfied with all, or moved by ambition, he determined to found a new school. The place chosen for his teaching was a public portico, adorned with the paintings of Polygnotus and other masters. Hence it was called ποικίλη στοά (the painted porch); more commonly, as it was the most famous in Athens, it was simply called στοά. From this arose the name of the Stoics. As a teacher, Zeno was celebrated for subtle reasoning and for enjoining strict morality of conduct. As a man, his conduct corresponded with his teaching. His doctrines and manner of life teach us that he gathered much from various systems. He gathered from Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle by the teaching of Xenocrates and Polemo, from the Megaric school by the teaching of Stilpo, Diodorus Cronus, and Philo. Cicero, in hisAcademic Questions, tells us that the doctrines of the old Academy were changed by Zeno only in name. He adhered too to the Cynic doctrines, slightly tinged by subsequent training perhaps, especially by Stilpo’s teaching that the perfection of wisdom consisted in impassivity. But he did not share in Cynic grossness, insolence, and affectation. He obtained the applause and love of numerous disciples, among whom was Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, Cleanthes, and perhaps Chrysippus; though the last may have been the disciple of Cleanthes only. To these two we must refer again. The Athenians are said so to have respected Zeno that they trusted to his keeping the keys of the citadel. This may be questioned; but there is no reason to doubtthat they honoured him with a golden crown, that they gave him a public burial in the Ceramicus when he died, and erected to his memory a statue of brass. By Cyprians and Sidonians, to whom he was allied by descent, he was also held in reverence. He is described as having been a thin withered man, of dark complexion, and with his neck bent. He preserved his health, though naturally feeble, by abstemious living. His diet, even when honoured by noble guests, as he often was, consisted only of figs, bread, and honey. His brow, furrowed with thought, and his look stern and hard, showed his Cynic education; but, in contrast to his first teachers, he was neat and careful in his dress and person. Frugal in his expenses, he was without avarice. He conversed freely, with poor as with rich. He had only one servant; Seneca says, none at all.
Though he was proverbially sober and chaste, he was assailed by various enemies in his lifetime. Arcesilaus and Carneades of the New Academy, and in his latter years, Epicurus, who disliked the philosophy and pride of Zeno, were his powerful antagonists. Little credit is due, however, to the abuse which passed on both sides. He lived to old age. When he died is matter of doubt. He is said to have been alive in the 130th Olympiad. In his 98th year, as he was leaving his school, he stumbled and fell, and broke one of his fingers in the fall. Pain so affected him that he exclaimed, striking the earth, Ἔρχομαι, τί μ’ ἀΰεις; “I come, why dost thou call me?” He went home and strangled himself, about the yearB.C.260.
In trying, at the present day, to estimate the teaching of Zeno, it is necessary for us to consider the circumstances of the age in which he lived and taught, and to remember also that it is difficult to find out how much ofthe later Stoic philosophy really came from him. His writings were numerous[12], but they are lost. His teaching seems to have been modified, and sometimes even changed altogether, by Chrysippus. Indeed the later professed disciples of the school seldom went back to the works of the first Stoic. Let us, as well as we can, however, lay hold of the circumstances in which he was placed as a philosopher, and the alterations he introduced.
He began his course at a time of decay in Greece, and when the mind of men was become sceptical as to all things in heaven and earth. Philosophers had so quarrelled with one another’s dogmas, and proved one another wrong so often, that men began to doubt if there were any foundation on which to rest.Godwas educating the world for the reception of the great truths of revelation. He did this by showing men how helpless they were in divine things by their own unaided nature, how contradictory their speculations, how far short of the truth the highest attainments of human intellects, how uncertain it was which was truth of the various theories proposed, so that men doubted about all truth. Zeno under these circumstances did a great work in educating the world still further, and preparing it for the great Truth. He was to the people of his day in some degree what Socrates was to the men of his age. He brought back the influence of reason and common sense, rescuing them from the Pyrrhonists, as Socrates did from the Sophists. Like the son of Sophroniscus, also, the founder of the Stoics turned men from mere speculation to action. Socrates taught men to look within themselves, and created a desire to live as became them. He was an ethical reformer, and so turned men away from the guesses of a so-called philosophy,and from the scepticism consequent on failure. Victor Cousin has well said, “La philosophie Grecque avait été d’abord une philosophie de la nature; arrivée à sa maturité elle change de caractère et de direction et elle devient une philosophie morale, sociale, humaine. C’est Socrate qui ouvre cette nouvelle ère et qui en représente le caractère en sa personne.” Plato followed him in this. His fundamental problem was how man might live likeGod. Aristotle turned men’s thoughts back again to physics and metaphysics; and then came a period of systematic scepticism, by which the vanity of the guesses of philosophy was exposed and derided. Zeno and Epicurus, so different in other respects, yet both brought men back to a better mind by teaching them that philosophy was the art of living aright rather than merely thinking aright; the former, because living aright was in accordance with nature,—the latter, because it made men happy, and happiness was the great end to be sought by all[13]. Zeno and Epicurus both had thus their share in training men to receive the great Truth ofGod; for they both proved that man of himself can do nothing but conceive of perfections that human nature alone cannot reach: while the believer in divine love and mercy learns to say withStPaul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
I have before intimated that Zeno has been said to have borrowed much of his philosophy from former masters, giving the truths new names. The various schools which at different times prevailed in Greece, amidst much contradiction, yet contained some germs of truth, and therefore so far had some agreement one withthe other. But the truth was cumbered with so much rubbish that it was overpowered and hidden. These various schools of thought endeavoured to grasp the same object from different standpoints, and opposed all others. The Ionics looked around them, and from external objects tried to make one natural law for all subjects and combinations. They wished to reduce all things to accord with a settled physical law. They aimed at discovering a principle, a substance, of which every thing that exists is a combination. The Mathematical school reasoned from within themselves. As Thales looked on the external universe and thence turned within, so Pythagoras reasoned on external objects from within himself, from mental harmonies to physical. Then came the Eleatics, contradicting even reason itself. Zeno, the Eleatic, argued against motion and sensible unity. Parmenides declared that “thought and being are the same;” that “thought and that for which thought exists are one.” Indeed the great maxim of the school was τὰ πάντα ἕν. They taught that the sensible universe was purely phenomenal and accidental: that it was apparent, not real. The Megaric school, which Zeno Citticus attended soon after he came to Athens, taught somewhat similar doctrines, but in a dialectic form. Their tenets, Pliny tells us, produced in daily life, “rigorem quendam torvitatemque naturæ duram et inflexibilem.” I have already said that Stilpo placed the height of wisdom in impassivity. These doctrines, so various, so contradictory to reason oftentimes, made many men professedly sceptics. Pyrrho and his followers, having proved the impossibility of a science superhuman in its height being reached by unaided man, supposed they had destroyed all knowledge and certainty whatever. The state of Athens then was particularly unsatisfactory. Oldcreeds were tottering. The spiritual life of Greece was decaying, as was its national. Men wanted some refuge from the distractions of their minds. Their spiritual nature, their soul, began to exert its power, to speak in tones that would be heard. The mind had been trying to still its craving with the noble but unsatisfying theories of Plato, or the subtleties of Aristotle. But the soul, the inner life, had been uncared for. Now it claimed its share of attention and new schools arose to satisfy, as far as they could, the newly felt longings.
At such a time, Zeno founded his system. When Greece was tottering and falling into ruin, out of materials which I have shown to be so contradictory, he built up a structure which outlasted Greece, and was removed (altered a little, but in the main the same), to the new centre of the civilization and power of the world. His system lasted from his day to the time of Marcus Aurelius. It was embraced by the Romans with eagerness, as being congenial with their nature, before they became corrupted by their unrivalled prosperity. When at length it had done its destined work in the world, it yielded to a mightier and holier influence; leaving, however, its impress on the souls of men, even as, before its own decay, it received some of the rays of divine light which came from heaven with the Son ofGod, though it did not acknowledge the boon.
It would be beside the purpose of the present essay to enter into all the specialities of the Zenonic doctrines; or to enquire at large, how far Zeno differed from Plato, or how nearly he agreed with Aristotle, in defining the manner of perception by the mind. We need not discuss τὴν καταληπτικὴν φαντασίαν, which Sextus Empiricus alleges to have been held by Zeno and his successors asthe one means of judging true from false; respecting which even Cleanthes and Chrysippus differed[14]. An outline of the main features of the system will be sufficient. As I have before said, the first Stoic fixed his thoughts chiefly on moral conduct. His philosophy was eminently practical. It referred to the daily life. In order to stem the torrent of scepticism and sensuality, he taught men the value, the absolute necessity, of virtue. They were to apply his dogmas to their daily experience. They were not to speculate, but to act; not to doubt, but to dare. He taught them also that what Socrates had said was true, that the knowledge and practice of good was virtue and wisdom, that vice was therefore error in its worst form. In order to induce men to conform to this knowledge in their way of life, he unfolded to them how they were related to the universe.
Every rational theory respecting the universe admits of an Absolute Being of some sort. The difference begins, when the relation of the universe with the Absolute Infinite is explained and unfolded. One theory would distinguish the Infinite from the universe, but make him act from a kind of necessity. A second theory would allow him to act with perfect freedom of will. A third theory would make the universe itself to be the Absolute Infinite; and a fourth would insist that the Infinite Being is matter, of which the universe is only a modification. Zeno seems to have taught the third of these theories; though in after writers we see traces of the first. According to him, there existed from all eternity a chaos, a confused mass, ὕλη πρώτη, which contained the germ of allfuture things. Gradually, order supervened and creation assumed forms of various kinds, resulting in the universe as it is now. The universe is one whole, which comprises all things; yet contains a passive principle, matter, τὸ πάσχον, and an active principle, τὸ ποιοῦν, which is reason, orGod. The soul of man is part of this divine nature, and will be reabsorbed into it and lose its individual existence. The Deity in action, if we may so speak, is a certain active æther, or fire, possessed of intelligence. This first gave form to the original chaos, and, being an essential part of the universe, sustains it in order. The overruling power, which seems sometimes in idea to have been separated from the Absolute Being, was εἱμαρμένη, fate, or absolute necessity. To this the universe is subject, both in its material and divine nature. Men return to life totally oblivious of the past, and by the decrees of fate are possessed of a renovated existence, but still in imperfection and subject to sorrow as before. The tenets of the later Stoics may have been tinged with Christian truth on this point, as on others; but they had none of the noble hope of the Christian ἀνάστασις. Indeed, respecting their dogma, Seneca said, “This renewal of life many would reject, were it not that their restored existence is accompanied with utter forgetfulness of the past.”
On their physical principles, the moral principles of the Stoics depended. Conceiving themselves to be part of universal nature, that their souls were part of the divinity which actuated matter, they held themselves in some measure to be gods. In human life therefore they must follow nature, of which they formed part. But then thisnaturewas not this or that man’s natural leaning, but the laws of fate and the universal course of things, from which resulted the unsuitableness of certain courses,and the excellence of others. To be conformed to the laws of the universe, of which they formed an essential part, was the ultimate end of life. Every man conforming to these laws is happy, notwithstanding external evils. Every man’s happiness, then, is in his own power; he is a god to himself in some measure. To live according to his true nature is to live godly; godly life is virtue. This is itself true happiness, independently of pleasure in the common acceptation of the term; because the supreme good is to follow what the law of nature points out as being good. Virtue having its seat in the soul, outward circumstances cannot reach the good man. As he can distinguish good from evil, he is wise; and this suffices for him. External things, forasmuch as they cannot reach him, can neither increase his happiness or cause him misery. Even torture cannot move him, because it cannot reach his inner, true nature. There is no distinction between different virtues as to degree, because they owe their existence to their accordance with nature. All vices are equal in degree, because they run counter to the one law of virtue. These seem to have been the principal features of Zeno’s teaching. His morality partook of the evil of its origin. It was essentially artificial. Little regard was paid to real nature in the pursuit of what was called natural law: there was little common sense, oftentimes, in the ideas set forth under pretence of philosophy.
We cannot lose sight of the fact, however, that Stoicism, as it came in contact with Christianity, was a system that owed much to Cleanthes, and still more to Chrysippus. Indeed, regarding the latter, we are told[15]that it was said, Εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἦν Χρύσιππος, οὐκ ἂν ἦν στοά. The former was the earnest Stoic; the latter the philosophical anddialectic setter forth of the system. Under his hands, in his various and most copious writings, the system was probably not merely developed, but materially modified in some respects, and systematized. Cleanthes has left few records of his opinions behind him: but his Hymn to Jupiter will ever stand as a marvellous memorial of his worth and intellect. It bears strong evidence to the Monotheism of the system which he espoused. It has been a matter of controversy whether the Stoics were monotheists, or polytheists. The hymn to which I have just referred, and to which I shall refer again in another chapter, bears strong evidence, on the face of it, to the belief in one absolute supreme being. Yet other passages in many Stoic writers would seem to convey a different idea. But it will be well for us not to forget that the system was founded on a notion of the divine nature totally different from our conception of a divine being. The monotheism of some of the Stoic writers may have been the result of previous education. The fact may be that one, or two, rose to higher conceptions of the Eternal, than others were privileged with. This may have resulted from their having come of a different stock[16], andhaving had a different early bent—a deeper intuition, as it were, by nature—a purer speculation as to the unseen—than those with which others of the sect were endowed. Those who were of a stock which deified almost all things, might carry their phantasies into the system itself. And indeed it is possible that the same persons, under different influences, may have had rather varied views of the hidden world. The system was one of ethics and not of speculative philosophy. And if Christianity, with all its divine testimonials and influences, does not bring all minds into one accord about all things—even those who are of one school of theology varying in opinion on certain points—how very probable it is that men of the same school of philosophy, with merely the authority of one man, neither possessing, nor claiming a divine mission as founder, should have somewhat different shades of thought. How possible it is that they should, while viewing things from different points of view, be almost inconsistent with themselves. This kind of inconsistency was urged again and again against Chrysippus, the most voluminous writer and chief dialectician of the Stoics. Cleanthes has left few memorials behind him, but his earnest pursuit of knowledge, his struggles to obtain the time and means of study, show the pre-eminent zeal of the man. This zeal was the great motive of his life. Possessed of a strong frame, of great powers of endurance, we are told that he earned by night what enabled him to live in study by day. His determination was so strong that he even made use of potsherdsand bones as his note-tablets. Such a man would impress his earnestness on the system he espoused. His disciple, Chrysippus, does not seem to have possessed his earnestness of purpose to find out the truth, so much as to establish the system and wage war in its favour against all adversaries. We have remarked that some inconsistencies of doctrine were alleged against him. These appear to have been owing to his desire to reconcile irreconcilable things; as, divine sovereignty with human freedom in any respect:—universal goodness in the ordering of nature with the presence of moral evil in the world. Such subjects must always remain mysteries. He who will explain them will be inconsistent either with himself or with truth.
I shall proceed, in another chapter, to place the system of Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus (that is, Stoicism as it came, in its perfected condition, into contact with divine truth) side by side with the doctrines and precepts taught us in the religion of Christ. We shall see much to admire, much to lament in the sect that wished to raise the individual almost to the level of the deity, and yet showed, by the suicides of the first two of its founders, and by other proofs of human error, the fallacy on which the system was built, that man himself is part of the divinity, and so has only to act on his own influence to rise to perfection.