as such the Stoics chose it. But they were not yet at the end of their perplexities; for while they were thus driven on one line of thought to an extreme extension of the range. of human volition, their view of the physical universe involved an equally thorough-going determinism. How could the vicious man be responsible if his vice were strictly predetermined? The Stoics answered that the error which was the essence of vice was so far voluntary that it could be avoided if men chose to exercise their reason; no doubt it depended on the innate force and firmness1 of a man's soul whether his reason was thus effectually exercised; but moral responsibility was thought to be saved if the vicious act proceeded from the man himself and not from any external cause.

With all this we have got little way towards ascertaining the positive practical content of Stoic wisdom. How are we to emerge from the barren circle of affirming (1) that wisdom is the sole good and unwisdom the sole evil, and (2) that wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil? how are we to find a method for determining the particulars of good conduct? Both Cynicism and Stoicism stood in need of such a method to complete their doctrine; since neither school was prepared to maintain that what the sage resolves to do is indifferent-no less than what befalls him-provided only he does it with a full conviction of its indifference. The Cynics, however, seem to have made no philosophical provision for this need; they were content to mean by virtue what any plain man meant by it, except in so far as their

1 Hence some members of the school, without rejecting the definition of virtue=knowledge, also defined it as "strength and force." This force the Stoics conceived materialistically, as a certain tension of the subtle æther or spirit that, in their view, was the substance of the soul. See note 1, p. 78.

sense of independence led them to reject certain received precepts and prejudices. The Stoics, on the other hand, not only worked out a detailed system of duties—or, as they termed them, "things meet and fit” (кaðýkovтa)1—for all occasions of life; they were further especially concerned to comprehend them under a general formula. They found this by bringing out the positive significance of the notion of Nature, which the Cynic had used chiefly in a negative way, as an antithesis to the "conventions" (vóμos), from which his knowledge had made him free. Even in this negative use of the notion, it is implied that whatever active tendencies in man are found to be "natural"—that is, independent of and uncorrupted by social customs and conventions will properly take effect in outward acts; but the adoption of "conformity to nature," as a general positive rule for outward conduct, seems to have been due to the influence on Zeno of Academic teaching. Whence, however, can this authority belong to the Natural, unless Nature, the ordered creation of which man is a part, be itself somehow reasonable, an expression or embodiment of divine law and wisdom? The conception of the world, as organised and fitted by divine thought, was common, in some form, to all the philosophies that looked back to Socrates as their founder; and an important section of these philosophies had been led to the view that this divine thought was the one real Being of the universe. This pantheistic doctrine harmonised thoroughly with the Stoic view of human good; but being unable to conceive substance idealistically, they (with con

1 The word "duty" in the modern sense is perhaps misleading as a translation of каðîкоν; because an act so termed is not a "right act (kaтóρowμa), unless performed from a right motive, i.e. in a purely reasonable or wise state of mind; otherwise it has merely an external fitness or suitability.

1

siderable aid from the earlier system of Heraclitus) supplied a materialistic side to their pantheism,-conceiving divine thought as a function of the primary and most pure material substance, a subtle fiery æther. They held the physical world to have been developed out of Zeus, so conceived; to be, in fact, a modification of his eternal substance into which it would ultimately be sublimated and reabsorbed; meanwhile it was throughout permeated with the fashioning force of his divine spirit, and perfectly ordered by his prescient law. The world, being thus essentially divine, they held to be perfect, regarded as a whole; whatever defects may appear in its parts must be conceived to become evanescent in the sight of that Supreme Reason which "knows how to even the odd and to order the disorderly, and to whom the unlovely is dear."2 This theological view of the physical universe had a double effect on the ethics of the Stoic. In the first place it gave to his cardinal conviction of the all-sufficiency of wisdom for human wellbeing a root of cosmical fact, and an atmosphere of religious and social emotion. The exercise of wisdom was now viewed as the pure life of that particle of divine substance which was in very truth the "god within him"; the reason whose

1 This primary substance-in its material aspect-was conceived as originally a highly elastic body; which was supposed by successive condensations to become differentiated into portions of unequal density and tension, the four elements. Other differences in the qualities of matter, as empirically known to us, were explained to be due to the presence in earth and water of currents of æther varying in tension (or, in some cases of fire and air, the rarer and more elastic pair of elements). And, by what appears to us a most bizarre confusion of ideas, these æther-currents were conceived to be the forces that held together-or, adopting Aristotelian language, the very constituted--the different kinds of matter, quâ different.

66

'forms "

that

2 The quotation is from the hymn attributed to Cleanthes, who presided over the Stoic school between Zeno and Chrysippus.

supremacy he maintained was the reason of Zeus, and of all gods and reasonable men, no less than his own; its realisation in any one individual was thus the common good of all rational beings as such; "the sage could not stretch out a finger rightly without thereby benefiting all other sages," nay, it might even be said that he was as useful to Zeus as Zeus to him." It is, I conceive, in view of this union in reason of rational beings that friends are allowed to be "external goods" to the sage, and that the possession of good children is also counted a good. But again, the same conception served to harmonize the higher and the lower elements of human life. For even in the physical or non-rational man, as originally constituted, we may see clear indications of the divine design, which it belongs to his rational will to carry into conscious execution; indeed, in the first stage of human life, before reason is fully developed, uncorrupted natural impulse effects what is afterwards the work of reason. Thus the formula of "living according to nature," in its application to man as the "rational animal," may be understood both as directing that reason is to govern, and as indicating how that government is to be practically exercised. In man, as in every other animal, from the moment of birth natural impulse prompts to self-preservation, and to the maintenance of his physical frame in its original integrity; then, when reason has been developed and has recognised itself as its own sole good, these "primary ends of nature," and whatever promotes these, still constitute the outward objects at which reason is to aim; there is a certain value (ågía) in them, in proportion to which they are "preferred" ("ponyμéva) and their opposites "rejected" (άжожроnypéva); indeed, it is only in the due and consistent exercise of such preference and

rejection that wisdom can find its practical manifestation. In this way all or most of the things commonly judged to be "goods"-health, strength, wealth, fame,1 etc.—are brought within the sphere of the sage's choice, though his real good still lies solely in the wisdom of the choice, and not in the thing chosen ; just as an archer aims at the bull'seye, his end being not the mark itself, but the manifestation of his skill in hitting it.2

We may illustrate the distinction just explained by referring to a point in the practical teaching of the Stoics which modern readers sometimes find perplexing, their encouragement of suicide. This at first sight seems to us inconsistent, at once with the virtuous fortitude which they commend and with their belief in the providential ordering of the world. Men are commonly driven to suicide by the miseries of life; but how, we ask, can the sage, to whom pain is no evil, be thus moved to quit the post which Divine Reason has assigned to him? The answer is, that if pain be not an evil, it is yet an alternative to be rejected, if painlessness is properly obtainable; and on the other hand, life is not a good in the view of wisdom, and though its preservation is generally to be preferred, cases may arise in which the sage receives unmistakable natural indications that death is preferable to life. Such indications, the Stoics held,

1 The Stoics seem to have varied in their view of "good repute," evdoğía; at first, when the school was more under the influence of Cynicism, they professed an outward as well as an inward indifference to it; ultimately they conceded the point to common sense, and included it among "preferred" things.

2 This comparison appears to have been variously applied by different Stoics; but it appears to me well adapted to illustrate the important doctrine with which I have connected it; and we may infer from Cicero (De Finibus, Book III.) that it was so used at least by some members of the school.