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STOICS
, a school of philosophers founded at the See also:close of the 4th See also:century B.C. by See also:Zeno of See also:Citium, and so called from the See also:Stoa or painted. See also:corridor (crro& aouciXn) on the See also:north See also:side of the See also:market-See also:place at See also:Athens, which, after its restoration by See also:Cimon, the celebrated painter See also:Polygnotus had adorned with frescoes representing scenes from the Trojan See also:War
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But, though it arose on Hellenic See also:soil, from lectures delivered in a public place at Athens, the school is scarcely to be considered.' a product of purely See also:Greek See also:intellect, but rather as the firstfruits of that inter-See also:action between See also:West and See also:East which followed the conquests of See also:
By the old Stoa is meant the period (c
.
304–205 B.C.) down to the See also:death of See also:Chrysippus, the second founder; then was laid the See also:foundation of theory, to which hardly anything of importance was afterwards added
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Confined almost to Athens, the school made its way slowly among many rivals
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Aristo of Chios and Herillus of Carthage, Zeno's heterodox pupils, Persaeus, his favourite See also:disciple and housemate, the poet See also:Aratus, and Sphaerus, the adviser of the Spartan See also: Thus, quite apart from the See also:general similarity of their ethical doctrine, the Cynics were materialists; they were also nominalists, and combated the Platonic ideas; in their theory of knowledge they made use of " reason " (Xbyos), which was also one of their leading ethical conceptions . In all these particulars Zeno followed them, and the last is the more important, because, Chrysippus having adopted a new criterion of truth—a clear and distinct See also:perception of sense—it is only from casual notices we learn that the See also:elder Stoics had approximated to Cynicism in making right reason the See also:standard . At the same time, it is certain that the See also:main outlines of the characteristic See also:physical doctrine, which is after all the foundation of their ethics and See also:logic, were the work of Zeno . The See also:Logos, which had been an ethical or psychological principle to the Cynics, received at his hands an See also:extension throughout the natural world, in which Heraclitean influence is unmistakable . See also:Reading the Ephesian doctrine with the eyes of a Cynic, and the Cynic ethics in the See also:light of Heracliteanism, he came to formulate his distinctive theory of the universe far in advance of either . In taking this immense stride and identifying the Cynic " reason," which is a See also:law for See also:man, with the " reason " which is the law of the universe, Zeno has been compared with See also:Plato, who similarly extended the Socratic " general notion " from the region of morals—of See also:justice, See also:temperance, virtue—to embrace all See also:objects of all thought, the verity of all things that are . If the recognition of physics and logic as two studies co-See also:ordinate with ethics is sufficient to differentiate the mature Zeno from the Cynic author of the Republic, no less than from his own heterodox disciple Aristo, the "eaathes. elaboration on all sides of Stoic natural philosophy belongs to Cleanthes, who'certainlywas not the merely docile and receptive intelligence he is sometimes represented as being . He carried on and completed the assimilation of Heraclitean doctrine; but his own contributions were more distinctive and See also:original than those of any other Stoic . Zeno's seeming See also:dualism of See also:God (or force) and formless See also:matter he was able to transform into the lofty See also:pantheism which breathes in every See also:line of the famous hymn to See also:Zeus . Heraclitus had indeed declared all to be in See also:flux, but we ask in vain what is the cause for the unceasing See also:process of his ever-living See also:fire . It was See also:left for Cleanthes to discover this See also:motive cause in a conception See also:familiar to Zeno, as to the Cynics before him, but restricted to the region of ethics—the conception of tension or effort . The soul of the See also:sage, thought the Cynics, should be strained and braced for See also:judgment and action; his first need is firmness (ebrovia) and Socratic strength .
But the mind is a corporeal thing
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Then followed the flash of genius: this varying tension of the one substance everywhere See also:present, a purely physical fact, accounts for the diverse destinies of all innumerable particular things; it is the veritable cause of the flux and process of the universe
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Zeno
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Herein lies the See also: In his Republic Zeno had gone so far as to declare the routine See also:education of the See also:day (e.g. See also:mathematics, See also:grammar, &c.) to be of no use . Such Cynic crudity Chrysippus rightly judged to be out of keeping with the requirements of a great dogmatic school, and he laboured on all sides after thoroughness, erudition and scientific completeness . In See also:short, Chrysippus made the Stoic system what it was, and as he left it we proceed to describe it . And first we will inquire, What is philosophy ? No idle gratification of curiosity, as Aristotle fabled of his See also:life intel-Concepuon lectual (which would be but a disguise for refined ofPhioso- See also:pleasure), no theory divorced from practice, no phy. pursuit of See also:science for its own See also:sake, but knowledge so far forth as it can be realized in virtuous action, the learning of virtue by exercise and effort and training . So absolutely is the " rare and priceless See also:wisdom " for which we strive identical with virtue itself that the three main divisions of philosophy current at the time and accepted by Zeno—logic, physics and ethics—are defined as the most generic or comprehensive i'irtues . How otherwise could they claim our attention ? Accordingly Aristo, holding to Cynicism when Zeno himself had got beyond it, rejected two of these parts of philosophy as useless and out of reach—a divergence which excluded him from the school, but strictly consistent with his view that ethics alone is scientific knowledge . Of the three divisions logic is the least important; ethics is the outcome of the whole, and historically the all-important vital See also:element; but the See also:foundations of the whole system are best discerned in the science of nature, which deals pre-eminently with the macrocosm and the See also:microcosm, the universe and man, including natural theologyand an See also:anthropology or psychology, the latter forming the See also:direct introduction to ethics . The Stoic system is in brief: (a) materialism, (b) dynamic materialism, lastly (c) See also:monism or pantheism . (a) The first of these characters is described by anticipation in Ph~,sks . Plato's Sophist (246 C seq.), where, arguing with those " who See also:drag everything down to the corporeal " (o sa), the Eleatic stranger would See also:fain prove to them the existence of some-thing incorporeal, as follows . " They admit the existence of an animate See also:body . Is soul then something existent (data) ? Yes . And the qualities of soul, as justice and wisdom—are they visible and tangible ? No . Do they then exist ? They are in a See also:dilemma." Now, however effective against Plato's contemporary Cynics or Atomists, the reasoning is thrown away upon the Stoics, who take boldly the one See also:horn of this dilemma . That qualities of bodies (and therefore of the corporeal soul) exist they do not deny; but they assert most uncompromisingly that they are one and all (wisdom, justice, &c.) corporeal . And they strengthen their position by taking Plato's own See also:definition (247 D), namely being is that which has the power to See also:act or be acted upon," and turning it against him . For this is only true of Body; action; Materialism except by contact, is inconceivable; and they reduce . every form of See also:causation to the efficient cause, which implies the,communication of See also:motion from one body to another . Again and again, therefore, only Body exists . The most real realities to Plato and Aristotle had been thought and the objects of thought, vows and 1/o1jT(i, whether abstracted from sensibles or inherent in " matter," as the incognizable basis of all See also:concrete existence . But this was too great an effort to last long . Such spiritualistic theories were nowhere really maintained after Aristotle and outside the circle of his immediate followers . The reaction came and left nothing of it all; for five centuries the dominant See also:tone of the older and the newer schools alike was frankly materialistic . " If," says Aristotle, " there is no other substance but the organic substances of nature; physics will be the highest of the sciences," a conclusion which passed for axiomatic until the rise of See also:Neoplatonism . The analogues therefore of metaphysical problems must be sought in physics; particularly that problem of the causes of things for which the Platonic See also:idea and the Peripatetic " constitutive form " had been, each in its turn, received solutions . (b) Tension . But the doctrine that all existence is confined within the limits of the sensible universe—that there is no being See also:save corporeal being or body—does not suffice to characterize, the Stoic system; it is no less a doctrine of the Epicureans . It is the idea of tension or tonicity as the essential attribute of body, in contradistinction to passive inert matter, which is distinctively Stoic . The Epicureans leave unexplained the primary constitution and first movements of their atoms or elemental solids; See also:chance or See also:declination may See also:account for them . Now, to the Stoics nothing passes unexplained; there is a reason (Xbyos) for everything in nature . Everything which exists is at once capable of acting and being acted upon . In everything that exists, therefore, even the smallest particle, there are these two principles . By virtue of the passive principle the thing is susceptible of motion and modification; it is matter which determines substance (oboia) . The active principle makes the matter a given determinate thing, characterizing and qualifying it, whence it is termed quality (1rotbris) . For all that is or happens there is an immediate cause or antecedent; and as " cause " means " cause of motion," and only body can act upon body, it follows that this antecedent cause is itself as truly corporeal as the matter upon which it acts . Thus we are led to regard the active principle " force " as everywhere co-extensive with " matter," as pervading and permeating it, and together with it occupying and filling space . This is that famous doctrine of universal permeation (KpEats Se' &too), by which the See also:axiom that two bodies cannot occupy the same space is practically denied . Thus that See also:harmony of See also:separate doctrines which contributes to the impressive simplicity of the Stoic physics is only attained at the cost of offending healthy common sense, for Body itself is robbed of a characteristic attribute . A thing is no longer, as Plato once thought, hot or hard or See also:bright by partaking in abstract See also:heat or hardness or brightness, but by containing within its own substance the material of these qualities, conceived as See also:air-currents in various degrees of tension . We hear, too, of corporeal days and years, corporeal virtues, and actions (like walking) which are bodies (Qwµara) . Obviously, again, the Stoic quality corresponds to Aristotle's essential form; in both systems the active principle, " the cause of all that matter becomes," is that which accounts for the existence of a given concrete thing (X&yos rqs ovaias) . Only here, instead of assuming something immaterial (and therefore un- verifiable), we fall back upon a current of air or See also:gas (srveuµa); the essential reason of the thing is itself material, See also:standing to it in the relation of a gaseous to a solid body . Here, too, the reason of things—that which accounts for them—is no longer some See also:external end to which they are tending; it is something acting within them, " a spirit deeply interfused," germinating and developing as from a See also:seed in the heart of each separate thing that exists (Xoyos vaep,uartx6s) . By its prompting the thing grows, develops and decays, while this " germinal reason," the element of quality in the thing, remains See also:constant through all its changes . (c) What then, we ask, is the relation between the active and the passive principles ? Is there, Matter and or is there not, an essential distinction between sub-Force . stance or matter and pervading force or cause or quality ? Here the Stoa shows signs of a development of doctrine . Zeno began, perhaps, by adopting the formulas of the See also:Peripatetics, though no doubt with a conscious difference, postulating that form was always attached to matter, no less than matter, as known to us, is everywhere shaped or informed . Whether he ever overcame the dualism. which the See also:sources, such as they are, unanimously ascribe to him is not clearly ascertained . It seems probable that he did not . But we can See also:answer authoritatively that to Cleanthes and Chrysippus, if not to Zeno, there was no real difference between matter and its cause, which is always a corporeal current, and therefore matter, although the finest and subtlest Monism, matter . In fact they have reached the final result of unveiled See also:hylozoism, from which the distinction of the active and passive principles is discerned to be a merely formal See also:con-cession to Aristotle, a See also:legacy from his dualistic doctrine . His technical See also:term Form (eraos) they never use, but always Reason or God . This was not the first time that approaches had been made to such a doctrine, and Diogenes of Apollonia in particular was led to oppose Anaxagoras, who distinguished Nous or Thought from every other See also:agent within the cosmos which is its work by postulating as his first principle something which should be at once physical substratum and thinking being . But until dualism had been thought out, as in the Peripatetic school, it was impossible that monism (or at any See also:rate materialistic monism) should be definitely and consciously maintained . One thing is certain: the Stoics provided no loophole of See also:escape by entrenching upon the " purely material " nature of matter; they laid down with rigid accuracy its two chief properties—extension in three dimensions, and resistance, both being traced back to force . There were, it is true, 'certain inconsistent conceptions, creations of thought to which nothing real and external corresponded, namely, time, space, void, and the idea expressed in See also:language ()s€sr6v) . But this inconsistency was covered by another: though each of these might be said to be something, they could not be said to exist . The distinction of force and matter is then something transitory and relative . Its history will serve as a See also:sketch of the See also:cosmogony of the Stoics, for they too, like earlier philosophers, Cosmogony.have their " See also:fairy tales of science." Before there was See also:heaven or See also:earth, there was See also:primitive substance or Pneuma, the See also:everlasting presupposition of particular things . This is the totality of all existence; out of it the whole visible universe proceeds, hereafter to be again resolved into it . Not the less is it the creative force, or deity, which develops and shapes this universal See also:order or cosmos . To the question, What is God ? Stoicism rejoins, What is God not ? In this original See also:state of Pneuma God and the world are absolutely identical . But even then tension, the essential attribute of matter, is at work . Though the force working every-where is one, there are diversities of its operation, corresponding to various degrees of tension . In this primitive Pneuma there riust reside the utmost tension and heat; for it is a fact of observation that most bodies expand when heated, whence we infer that there is a pressure in heat, an expansive and dispersive tendency . The Pneuma .cannot long withstand this intense pressure . Motion backwards and forwards once set up goes to cool the glowing See also:mass of fiery vapour and to weaken the tension . Hereupon follows the first differentiation of primitive substance—the separation of force from matter, the See also:emanation of the world from God . The germinal world-making See also:powers 0(QTrEpgaTLK01 X6'yoL), which, in virtue of its tension, slumbered in Pneuma, now proceed upon their creative task . The primitive substance, be it remembered, is not Heraclitus's fire (though Cleanthes also called it See also:flame of fire, 4aot) any more than it is the air or " breath " of Anaximenes or Diogenes of Apollonia . Chrysippus determined it, following Zeno, to be fiery breath or See also:ether, a spiritualized sublimed intermediate element . The See also:cycle of its transformations and successive condensations constitutes the life of the universe, the. mode of existence proper to finite and particular being . For the universe and all its parts are only different embodiments and stages in that See also:metamorphosis of primitive being which Heraclitus had called a progress up and down (oSos avw Kara)) . Out of it is separated, first, elemental fire, the fire which we know, which See also:burns and destroys; and this, again, condenses into air or aerial vapour; a further step in the downward path derives See also:water and earth from the solidification of air . At every See also:stage the degree of tension requisite for existence is slackened, and the resulting element approaches more and more to " inert " matter . But, just as one element does not wholly pass over into another (e.g. only a part of air is transmuted into water or earth), so the Pneuma itself does not wholly pass over into the elements . The See also:residue that remains in original purity with its tension yet undiminished is the ether in the highest See also:sphere of the visible heavens, encircling the world of which it is See also:lord and See also:head . From the elements the one substance is transformed into the multitude of individual things in the orderly universe, which again is itself a living thing or being, and the Pneuma pervading it, and conditioning life and growth everywhere, is its soul . But this process of differentiation is not eternal; it continues only until the times of the restoration of all things . For the world which has grown up will in turn decay . The tension which has been relaxed will again be tightened; there will be a See also:gradual See also:resolution of things into elements, and of elements into the primary substance, to be consummated in a general conflagration when once more the world will be absorbed in God . Then in due order a new cycle of development begins, reproducing the last in every minutest detail, and so on for ever . The doctrine of Pneuma, vital breath or " spirit," arose in the medical schools . The simplest reflection among savages and See also:half-civilized men connects vitality with the air inhaled in Pneuma. respiration; the disciples of Hippocrates, without much modifying this primitive belief, explained the See also:maintenance of vital warmth to be the See also:function of the breath within the organism . In the time of Alexander the Great Praxagoras discovered the distinction between the See also:arteries and the See also:veins . Now in the See also:corpse the former are empty; hence, in the light of these preconceptions they were declared to be vessels for conveying Pneuma to the different parts of the body . A generation afterwards Erasistratus made this the basis of a new theory of diseases and their treatment . Vital spirit, inhaled from the outside air, rushes through the arteries till it reaches the various centres, especially the See also:brain and the heart, and there causes thought and organic movement . But long before this the See also:peculiar character of air had been recognized as something intermediate to the corporeal and the incorporeal: when Diogenes of Apollonia revived the old Ionian hylozoism in opposition to the dualism of Anaxagoras, he made this, the typical example of matter in the gaseous state, his one element . In Stoicism, for the moment, the two conceptions are united, soon, however, to diverge—the medical conception to receive its final development under See also:Galen, while the philosophical conception, passing over to See also:Philo and others, was shaped and modified at Alexandria under the influence of Judaism, whence it played a great part in the developments of Jewish and See also:Christian See also:theology . The influence upon Stoicism of Heraclitus has been differently conceived . Siebeck would reduce it within very small dimensions, but this is not See also:borne out by the concise history found at contrast to See also:Herculaneum (See also:Index here., ed . See also:Comparetti, See also:col . 4 seq.). meraciitus . They substituted primitive Pneuma for his primitive fire, but so far as they are hylozoists at all they stand upon the same ground with him . Moreover, the commentaries of Cleanthes, Aristo and Sphaerus on Heraclitean writings (Diog . See also:Laer. vii . 174, ix . 5, 15) point to common study of these writings under Zeno . Others again (e.g .
See also:Lassalle) represent the Stoics as merely diluting and distorting Heracliteanism
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But this is altogether wrong, and the proofs offered, when rightly sifted, are often seen to See also:rest upon the distortion of Heraclitean doctrine in the reports of later writers, to assimilate it to the better known but essentially distinct innovations of the Stoics
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In Heraclitus the constant flux is a metaphysical notion replaced by the interchange of material
elements which Chrysippus stated as a See also:simple proposition of physics
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Heraclitus offers no See also:analogy to the doctrine of four (not three) elements as different grades of tension; to the conception of fire and air as the " form," in Aristotelian terminology, of particulars; nor to the function of organizing fire which works by methodic See also:plan to produce and preserve the world (ri;p rsxeieev 6Slw ,3a6i;'ov ir1 yivso w e6u/See also:lou)
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Nor, again, is there any analogy to the peculiar Stoic doctrine of universal intermingling (epuacs ii Moe)
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The two active elements interpenetrate the two See also:lower or more relaxed, winding through all parts of matter and so pervading the greater masses that there is no See also:mechanical mixture, nor yet a chemical See also:combination, since both " force " and " matter " retain their relative characters as before
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Even the distinction between " force " and
matter "—so See also:alien to the spirit of Heraclitus—is seen to be a necessary consequence
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Once assume that every character and See also:property of a particular thing is determined solely by the tension in it of a current of Pneuma, and (since that which causes currents in the thing cannot be absolutely the same with the thing itself) Pneuma, though present in all things, must be asserted to vary indefinitely in quantity and intensity
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So condensed and coarsened is the indwelling air-current of inorganic bodies that no trace of See also:elasticity or life remains; it cannot even afford them the power of motion; all it can do is to hold them together (QUVEKTLKi/ Suvaµls), and, in technical language, Pneuma is present in See also:
Later on much See also:evidence goes to show that (by a divergence from the orthodox standard perhaps due to Platonic influence) it was a Stoic tenet to concede a soul, though not a rational soul, throughout the See also:animal kingdom
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To this higher manifestation of Pneuma can be traced back the " esprits animaux " of See also:Descartes and See also:Leibnitz, which continue to See also:play so great a part even in See also:Locke
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The universal presence of Pneuma was confirmed by observation
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A certain warmth, akin to the vital heat of organic being, seems to be found in inorganic nature: vapours from the earth, hot springs, See also:sparks from the See also:flint, were claimed as the last remnant of Pneuma not yet utterly slackened and See also: |