1

after his death, in which the schools sprung from Socrates were still predominant in Greco-Roman culture, as compared with the effect which it has had, directly or indirectly, in shaping the thought of modern Europe. Partly, no doubt, the limited influence of the "Peripatetics" (as Aristotle's disciples were called) is to be attributed to that exaltation of the purely speculative life which distinguished the Aristotelian ethics from other later systems; since this was too alien from the common moral consciousness to find much acceptance in an age in which the ethical aims of philosophy had again become paramount. Partly, again, the analytical distinctness of Aristotle's manner brings into special prominence the difficulties that attend the Socratic effort to reconcile the moral aspirations of men, and the principles on which they agree to distribute mutual praise and blame, with the principles on which their practical reasonings are commonly conducted. The conflict between these two elements of Common Sense was too profound to be compromised; and the moral consciousness of mankind demanded a more trenchant partisanship than Aristotle's. Its demands were met by a school which separated the moral from the worldly view of life, with an absoluteness and definiteness that caught the imagination; which regarded practical goodness as the highest result and manifestation of its ideal of wisdom; and which bound the common notions of duty into an apparently complete and coherent system, by a formula that comprehended the whole of human life, and exhibited its relation to the ordered process of the universe. This school was always known as

1 The term is derived from πeρɩñaтeîv, “to walk about," and was applied to the disciples of Aristotle in consequence of the master's custom of giving instruction while walking to and fro in the shady avenues of the gymnasium where he lectured.

Zeno

(prob. 342

270 B.C.)

the "Stoic," from the Porch or portico (σToá) in which its original founder1 Zeno used to teach. The intellectual descent of its ethical doctrines is principally to be traced to Socrates through the Cynics, though an important element in them must be referred to the influence of the Academic 'school. Both Stoic and Cynic maintained, in its sharpest form, the fundamental tenet that the practical knowledge which they identify with virtue is or involves a condition of soul that is alone sufficient for complete human wellbeing. It is true that the Cynics were more concerned to emphasise the negative side of the sage's wellbeing, its independence of bodily health and strength, beauty, pleasure, wealth, good birth, good fame; while the Stoics brought into more prominence its positive side, the magnanimous confidence, the tranquillity undisturbed by grief, the joy and good cheer of the spirit, which inseparably attended the possession of wisdom. This difference, however, did not amount to disagreement. The Stoics, in fact, seem generally to have regarded the Cynic practice of rigidly reducing the provision for physical needs to a minimum, without regard to conventional proprieties, as an emphatic manner of expressing the essential antithesis between philosophic aims and vulgar desires; a manner which, though not necessary or even normal, might yet be advantageously adopted by the sage under certain circumstances.3

1 I use the term "original founder" because the part taken by Chrysippus (about 280-206 B.C.) in the development of the Stoic system was so important that some regarded it as no less essential than Zeno's. "Had not Chrysippus been, no Porch had been," says a poet quoted by Diogenes Laertius, vii. 183.

2 See p. 83.

It has been suggestively said that Cynicism was to Stoicism what monasticism was to early Christianity. The analogy, however, must

Stoicism. The pas

Wherein, then, does this knowledge or wisdom that § 14. makes free and perfect consist? Both Cynics and Stoics agreed that its most important function, that which consti- sionless Sage. tutes the fundamental distinction between the wise and the unwise, consists in recognising that the sole good of man lies in this knowledge or wisdom itself. It must be under stood that they did not, any more than Socrates, conceive true knowledge of good to be possible apart from its realisation in a good life;-though they held that the duration of such a life was a matter of indifference, and that the perfection of human wellbeing would be attained by any individual in whom perfect wisdom was realised even for a moment. This return of the Stoics to the Socratic position, after the divergence from it which we have seen gradually taking place in Platonic-Aristotelian thought, is very noteworthy; it is to be attributed to the stress that their psychology laid on the essential unity of the rational self that is the source of conscious human action, which prevented them from accepting Plato's analysis of the springs of such action into a regulative element and elements needing regulation. They held that what we call passion is a morbid and disorderly condition of the rational soul, involving erroneous judgment as to what is to be sought or shunned. From such passionate errors the truly wise man will, of course, be free. He will, indeed, be conscious of the solicitations of physical appetite; but he will not be misled into supposing that its object is really a good; he cannot, therefore, strictly speaking, hope for the attainment of this object or fear to miss it, not be pressed too far, since orthodox Stoics do not ever seem to have regarded Cynicism as the more perfect way. They held, however, that it was a "short road to virtue," and that a Cynic who became a sage should abide in his Cynicism: and we find that Epictetus gives the name of Cynic to Socrates and other moral heroes.

as these emotions involve the conception of it as a good. Similarly, though he will be subject like other men to bodily pain, this will not cause him mental grief or disquiet, as his worst agonies will not disturb his clear conviction that it is really indifferent to his true reasonable self. And so of all other objects that commonly excite men's hope, fear, joy, or grief: they cannot produce these states in the sage, because he cannot judge them to be really good or bad. We are not therefore to regard the sage as an altogether emotionless being; there is a reasonable elation over the attainment of what is truly good, movements of inclination or aversion to what reason judges preferable1 or the reverse, which the wisest man may experience; but the passions that sway ordinary human minds cannot affect him. That this impassive sage was a being hardly to be found among living men the later Stoics at least were fully aware. They faintly suggested that one or two moral heroes of old time might have realised the ideal ; but they admitted that, except these, even all other philosophers were merely in a state of progress towards it. This admission, however, did not in the least diminish the rigour of their demand for absolute loyalty to the exclusive claims of wisdom. The assurance of its own unique value that such wisdom involved they held to be an abiding possession for those who had attained it;2 and without this assurance no act could be truly wise or virtuous. Whatever was not of knowledge was of sin; and the distinction between right and wrong being absolute and not admitting of degrees, all sins were equally sinful; whoever broke the 1 For the distinction between the "Preferred" or "Preferable" and 'the "Good," see pp. 79, 80.

2 The Stoics were not quite agreed as to the immutability of virtue, when once possessed; but they were agreed that it could only be lost through the loss of reason itself.

least commandment was guilty of the whole law.

Similarly,

all wisdom was somehow involved in any one of the manifestations of wisdom, commonly distinguished as particular virtues ;-in classifying which the Stoics seem generally to have adopted Plato's fourfold division as at least the basis of their own scheme;1 though whether these virtues were specifically distinct, or only the same knowledge in different relations, was a subtle question on which they do not seem to have been agreed.

dom and

し Was, then, this rare and priceless knowledge something Stoic Freewhich it was possible for man to attain, or were human Determinshortcomings really involuntary ? There is an obvious ism. danger to moral responsibility involved in the doctrine that vice is involuntary; which yet seems a natural inference from the Socratic identification of knowledge with virtue. Hence, as we have seen, Aristotle had already been led to attempt a refutation of this doctrine; but his attempt had only shown the profound difficulty of attacking the paradox, so long as it was admitted that no one could of deliberate/ purpose act contrary to what seemed to him best. Now, Aristotle's divergence from Socrates had not led him so far as to deny this; while for the Stoics who had receded to the original Socratic position, the difficulty was still more. patent. In fact, a philosopher who maintains that virtue is essentially knowledge has to choose between alternative paradoxes: he must either allow vice to be involuntary, or affirm ignorance to be voluntary. The latter horn of the dilemma is at any rate the less dangerous to morality, and

1 The Stoic definitions of the four virtues appear to have varied a good deal. Zeno, according to Plutarch, defined Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude, as Wisdom in "things to be distributed," "things to be chosen," and things to be endured"; and this statement may be taken as expressing briefly the general view of the school.