may say that the Stoics distinguish in the corporeal—although nature
is only the manifestation of one common law—the moment of activity
and that of passivity; the former is, according to Aristotle, active
reason, or, according to Spinoza, _natura naturans_; the latter passive
reason, or _natura naturata_. The latter is matter, substance without
quality, for quality is, generally speaking, form, _i.e._ that which
forms universal matter into something particular. This is indeed the
reason likewise that with the Greeks quality is called τὸ ποιόν, just
as we in German derive _Beschaffenheit_ from _Schaffen_—that which is
posited, the negative moment. But the actuating, as the totality of
forms, is, according to the Stoics, the Notion in matter; and this is
God. (Diog. Laërt. VII. 134.)
As regards the further nature of these forms, these universal laws of
nature, and the formation of the world, the Stoics have in the main
adopted the ideas of Heraclitus, for Zeno studied him very particularly
(_supra_, p. 239). They thus make fire the real Notion, the active
principle which passes into the other elements as its forms. The
world arises by the self-existent gods driving the universal material
substance (οὐσίαν) out of the fire, through the air, into the water;
and as in all generation the moisture which surrounds a seed comes
first as the begetter of all that is particular, so that conception,
which in this respect is called seed-containing (σπερματικός), remains
in the water and then actuates the indeterminate Being of matter into
the origination of the other determinations. The elements, fire, water,
air and earth, are consequently primary. Respecting them the Stoics
speak in a manner which has no longer any philosophic interest.
“The coagulation of the denser parts of the world forms the earth;
the thinner portion becomes air, and if this becomes more and more
rarefied, it produces fire. From the combination of these elements are
produced plants, animals, and other kinds of things.” The thinking
soul is, according to them, of a similar fiery nature, and all human
souls, the animal principle of life, and also plants, are parts of
the universal world-soul, of the universal fire; and this central
point is that which rules and impels. Or, as it is put, souls are a
fiery breath. Sight, in the same way, is a breath of the ruling body
(ἡγεμονικοῦ) transmitted to the eyes; similarly hearing is an extended,
penetrating breath, sent from the ruling body to the ears.[128]
Respecting the process of nature we may further say this: Fire, Stobæus
tells us (Eclog. phys. I. p. 312), is called by the Stoics an element
in a pre-eminent sense, because from it, as the primary element, all
else arises through a transformation, and in it, as in an ultimate,
everything is fused and becomes dissolved. Thus Heraclitus and Stoicism
rightly comprehended this process as a universal and eternal one. This
has even been done by Cicero, though in a more superficial way; in
this reflection he falsely sees the conflagration of the world in time
and the end of the world, which is quite another matter. For in his
work _De natura Deorum_ (II. 46) he makes a Stoic speak thus: “In the
end (_ad extremum_) everything will be consumed by fire; for if all
moisture becomes exhausted the earth can neither be nourished, nor can
air return into existence. Thus nothing but fire remains, through whose
reanimation and through God the world will be renewed and the same
order will return.” This is spoken after the manner of the ordinary
conception. But to the Stoics everything is merely a Becoming. However
deficient this may be, God, as the fiery principle, is yet to them
the whole activity of nature, and likewise the rational order of the
same, and in this lies the perfect pantheism of the Stoic conception of
nature. Not only do they call this ordering force God, but also nature,
fate or necessity (εἱμαρμένην), likewise Jupiter, the moving force of
matter, reason (νοῦν) and foresight (πρόνοιαν); to them all these are
synonymous.[129] Because the rational brings forth all, the Stoics
compare this impelling activity to a seed, and say: “The seed which
sends forth something rational (λογικόν) is itself rational. The world
sends forth the seeds of the rational and is thus in itself rational;”
that is to say, rational both generally, in the whole, and in each
particular existent form. “All beginning of movement in any nature and
soul rises from a ruling principle, and all powers which are sent forth
upon the individual parts of the whole proceed from the ruling power as
from a source; so that each force that is in the part is also in the
whole, because the force is distributed by the ruling power in it. The
world embraces the seed-containing conceptions of the life which is in
conformity with the conception,” _i.e._ all particular principles.[130]
The Physics of the Stoics is thus Heraclitean, though the logical
element is entirely at one with Aristotle; and we may regard it as
being such. However, speaking generally, only those belonging to
earlier times had a physical element in their philosophy: those coming
later neglected Physics entirely and kept alone to Logic and to Ethics.
The Stoics again speak of God and the gods according to the popular
manner of regarding them. They say that “God is the ungenerated and
imperishable maker of all this disposition of things, who after certain
periods of time absorbs all substance in Himself, and then reproduces
it from Himself.”[131] There no definite perception is reached, and
even the above relation of God, as absolute form, to matter has
attained no developed clearness. The universe is at one time the unity
of form and matter, and God is the soul of the world; at another time,
the universe, as nature, is the Being of the constituted matter,
and that soul is antagonistic to it, but the activity of God is a
disposition of the original forms of matter.[132] This opposition is
devoid of the essentials of union and division.
Thus the Stoics remain at the general conception that each individual
is comprehended in a Notion, and this again in the universal Notion,
which is the world itself. But because the Stoics recognized the
rational as the active principle in nature, they took its phenomena
in their individuality as manifestations of the divine; and their
pantheism has thereby associated itself with the common ideas about
the gods as with the superstitions which are connected therewith (p.
235), with belief in all sorts of miracles and with divination—that is
to say, they believe that in nature there are intimations given which
men must receive through divine rites and worship. Epicureanism, on the
contrary, proceeds towards the liberation of men from this superstition
to which the Stoics are entirely given over. Thus Cicero, in his work
_De divinatione_, has taken the most part of his material from them,
and much is expressly given as being the reasoning of the Stoics. When,
for example, he speaks of the premonitory signs given in connection
with human events, all this is conformable with the Stoic philosophy.
The fact that an eagle flies to the right, the Stoics accepted as a
revelation of God, believing that thereby it was intimated to men what
it was advisable for them to do in some particular circumstances. Just
as we find the Stoics speaking of God as having universal necessity,
to them God, as Notion, has hence a relation to men and human ends
likewise, and in this respect He is providence; thus they now arrived
at the conception of particular gods also. Cicero says in the work
quoted above (II. 49): “Chrysippus, Diogenes and Antipater argued thus:
If gods exist, and if they do not let men know beforehand what is to
happen in the future, they cannot love men, or else they themselves do
not know what stands before them in the future, or they are of opinion
that it does not signify whether man knows it or not, or they consider
such a revelation beneath the dignity of their majesty, or they cannot
make it comprehensible to men.” All this they refute, for amongst other
things they say that nothing can exceed the beneficence of the gods,
&c. Thus they draw the conclusion that “the gods make known to men the
future”—a system of reasoning in which the entirely particular ends
of individuals also form the interests of the gods. To make men know
and comprehend at one time and not at another, is an inconsistency,
_i.e._ an incomprehensibility, but this very incomprehensibility, this
obscurity, is the triumph of the common way of regarding religions
affairs. Thus in the Stoics all the superstitions of Rome had their
strongest supporters; all external, teleological superstition is taken
under their protection and justified. Because the Stoics started from
the assertion that reason is God (it certainly is divine, but it
does not exhaust divinity), they immediately made a bound from this
universal to the revelation of that which operates for the sake of
individual ends. The truly rational is doubtless revealed to men as the
law of God; but the useful, what is in conformity with individual ends,
is not revealed in this truly divine revelation.
2. LOGIC.
In the second place, as to the intellectual side of the philosophy, we
must first of all. consider the principle of the Stoics in answering
the question of what the true and rational is. In regard to the source
of our knowledge of truth, or of the criterion, which in those times
used to be discussed (Vol. I. p. 474, Vol. II. p. 233), the Stoics
decided that the scientific principle is the conception that is laid
hold of (φαντασία καταληπτική), for the true as well as for the good;
for the true and good are set forth as content or as the existent.
Thus a unity of apprehending thought and Being is set forth in which
neither can exist without the other; by this is meant not sensuous
conception as such, but that which has returned into thought and become
proper to consciousness. Some of the older Stoics, amongst whom we
certainly find Zeno, called this criterion the very truth of reason
(ὀρθὸς λόγος). Ordinary conception on its own account (φαντασία) is
an impression (τύπωσις), and for it Chrysippus used the expression
alteration (ἐτεροίωσις).[133] But that the conception should be true,
it must be comprehended; it begins with feeling, whereby in fact the
type of another is brought into us; the second step is that we should
transform this into part of ourselves, and this first of all occurs
through thought.
According to Cicero’s account (Academ. Quæst. IV. 47), Zeno illustrated
the moments of this appropriation by a movement of the hand. When he
showed the open palm he said that this was a sensuous perception;
when he bent the fingers somewhat, this was a mental assent through
which the conception is declared to be mine; when he pressed them
quite together and formed a fist, this was comprehension (κατάληψις),
just as in German we speak of comprehension [Begreifen] when by means
of our senses we lay hold of anything in a similar way; when he then
brought the left hand into play and pressed together that fist firmly
and forcibly, he said that this was science, in which no one but the
wise man participated. This double pressure, my pressing with the
other hand that which is grasped, is said to signify conviction, my
being conscious of the identity of thought with the content. “But who
this wise man is or has been the Stoics never say,” adds Cicero; and
of this we shall afterwards have to speak in greater detail. In fact,
the matter is not made clear through this gesticulation of Zeno’s.
The first action, the open hand, is sensuous apprehension, immediate
seeing, hearing, &c.; the first motion of the hand is then, speaking
generally, spontaneity in grasping. This first assent is likewise
given by fools; it is weak, and may be false. The next moment is the
closing of the hand, comprehension, taking something in; this makes
the ordinary conception truth, because the ordinary conception becomes
identical with thought. By this my identity with this determination
is indeed set forth, but this is not yet scientific knowledge, for
science is a firm, secure, unchangeable comprehension through reason or
thought, which is that which rules or directs the soul. Midway between
scientific knowledge and folly is the true Notion as the criterion,
although as yet it is not itself science; in it thought gives its
approbation to existence and recognizes itself, for approbation is
the harmony of a thing with itself. But in scientific knowledge a
perception of the first elements and determinate knowledge through
thought of the object is contained. Thus the ordinary conception as
apprehended is thought; scientific knowledge is the consciousness of
thought, the knowledge of that harmony.
We may also give our assent to these conclusions of the Stoics with
their various stages, since in them there is a perception which is
undoubtedly true. In this we have an expression of the celebrated
definition of the truth, by which it is made the harmony of object and
consciousness; but at the same time it is well to remark that this is
to be understood simply, and not as indicating that consciousness had a
conception, and that on the other side stood an object, which two had
to harmonize with one another, and hence that a third was necessarily
brought into existence which had to compare them. Now this would be
consciousness itself, but what this last can compare is nothing more
than its conception, and—not the object, but—its conception again.
Consciousness thus really accepts the conception of the object; it is
by this approbation that the conception actually receives truth—the
testimony of mind to the objective rationality of the world. It is
not, as is ordinarily represented, that a round object here impresses
itself upon wax, that a third compares the form of the round and of the
wax and, finding them to be similar, judges that the impress must have
been correct, and the conception and the thing have harmonized. For
the action of thought consists in this, that thought in and for itself
gives its approbation and recognizes the object as being in conformity
with itself; this it is in which lies the power of truth—or approbation
is the expression of this harmony, or judgment itself. In this, say
the Stoics, the truth is contained; it is an object which is likewise
thought, so that the thought that gives its assent is the ruling
thought which posits the harmony of subject with content. The fact that
anything is or has truth is thus not because it is (for this moment of
Being is only ordinary conception), but the fact that it is, has its
power in the approbation of consciousness. But this thought alone and
for itself is not the truth, nor is the truth as such contained in it,
for the Notion requires the objective element and is only the rational
consciousness respecting the truth. But the truth of the object itself
is contained in the fact that this objective corresponds to thought,
and not the thought to the objective; for this last may be sensuous,
changeable, false, and contingent, and thus it is untrue for mind.
This is the main point as far as the Stoics are concerned, and even
if we discover the Stoic speculative doctrines from their antagonists
better than from their originators and advocates, yet from them, too,
this idea of unity proceeds; and while both sides of this unity are
opposed, both are necessary, but thought is essential reality. Sextus
Empiricus (adv. Math. VIII. 10) understands this thus: “The Stoics say
that as regards the perceptible and that which is thought some things
alone are true; what is felt, however, is not immediate (έξ εὐθείας),
for it becomes true for the first time through its relation to the
thought that corresponds to it.” Thus neither is immediate thought the
true, excepting in so far us it corresponds to the Notion and is known
through the working out of rational thought.
This general idea is the only one which is interesting in the Stoics,
but even in this very principle, limitations are found to be present.
It merely expresses the truth as subsisting in the object, as thought
of, yet for that very reason it is still a very formal determination,
or not in itself the real Idea. From this point of view Sextus
Empiricus (adv. Math. X. 183) examines the Stoics, and he considers
and discusses them in all sorts of ways. The most striking thing that
he says is what relates to the following. The fact that anything is,
rests in its being thought—the fact that it is thought in something
being there; the one is the pre-supposition of the other. That is to
say, the Stoics assert that a thing exists, not because it is, but
through thought; but consciousness for its existence requires another,
for thought is likewise one-sided. In this criticism by Sextus it is
indicated that thought requires an object as an external to which it
gives its approbation. There can be no talk of its being here indicated
that the thinking mind in order to exist as consciousness does not
require the object; this is really inherent in its conception. But the
“this” of the object as an external is only a moment which is not the
only one or the essential. It is the manifestation of mind, and mind
exists only in that it appears; this therefore must come to pass in
it, that it must have its object as external and give its approbation
to it—that is, it must withdraw from this relationship into itself and
therein recognize its unity. But likewise, having gone into itself, it
has now from itself to beget its object and give itself the content
which it sends forth from itself. Stoicism is only this return of
mind into itself, positing the unity of itself and the object, and
recognizing the harmony; but not the going forth again to the extension
of the real knowledge of a content from itself. We do not find Stoicism
getting any farther, for it stops short at making the consciousness of
this unity its object, without developing it in the slightest; thus
reason remains the simple form which does not go on to the distinction
of the content itself. Hence the formalism of this celebrated standard,
and of the standpoint from which all truth of content is judged, rests
farther in the fact that the thought of thought, as what is highest,
finds this content indeed conformable to itself and appropriates it,
since it transforms it into the universal, but its determinations are
given. For if thought predominates, still it is always universal form
alone. On account of this universality thought yields nothing but the
form of identity with itself; the ultimate criterion is thus only the
formal identity of the thought which discovers harmony. But it may
be asked, with what? For there no absolute self-determination, no
content that proceeds from thought as such is to be found; and hence
everything may harmonize with my thought. The criterion of the Stoics
is consequently only the principle of contradiction; yet when we remove
the contradiction from absolute reality, it is indeed self-identical,
but for that very reason empty. The harmony must be a higher one; there
must be harmony with self in what is other than self, in content, in
determination; and thus it must be harmony with harmony.
In accordance with this recognition of the principle of the Stoics,
both their logic and their morality is judged; neither the one nor the
other arrives at being immanent free science. We have already remarked
(p. 241) that they also occupied themselves with logical definitions,
and since they made abstract thought the principle, they have brought
formal logic to great perfection. Logic is hence to them logic in
the sense that it expresses the activity of the understanding as of
conscious understanding; it is no longer as with Aristotle, at least
in regard to the categories, undecided as to whether the forms of the
understanding are not at the same time the realities of things; for the
forms of thought are set forth as such for themselves. Then along with
this comes in, for the first time, the question respecting the harmony
of thought and object or the demand that an appropriate content of
thought be shown. However, since all given content may be taken into
thought and posited as something thought without therefore losing its
determinate character, and this determinate character contradicts and
does not support the simplicity of thought, the taking of it up does
not help at all; for its opposite may also be taken up and set forth
as something thought. The opposition is thereby, however, only in
another form; for instead of the content being in outward sensation as
something not pertaining to thought and not true, as it formerly was,
it now pertains to thought, but is unlike it in its determinateness,
seeing that thought is the simple. Thus what was formerly excluded
from the simple Notion, now comes into it again; this separation
between activity of the understanding and object must indeed be made,
but likewise the unity in the object as such has to be shown, if it
is only something thought. Hence Scepticism cast up this opposition
more especially to the Stoics, and the Stoics amongst themselves had
always to improve on their conceptions. As we have just seen (p. 250)
in Sextus Empiricus, they did not quite know whether they should define
conception as impression or alteration, or in some other way. Now if
this conception is admitted into that which directs the soul, into pure
consciousness, Sextus further asks (since thought _in abstracto_ is the
simple and self-identical which, as incorporeal, is neither passive
nor active), How can an alteration, an impression, be made on this?
Then the thought-forms are themselves incorporeal. But, according to
the Stoics, only the corporeal can make an impression or bring about
an alteration.[134] That is to say, on the one hand, because corporeal
and incorporeal are unlike they cannot be one; and, on the other,
incorporeal thought-forms, as capable of no alteration, are not the
content, for this last is the corporeal only.
If the thought-forms could in fact have attained the form of content,
they would have been a content of thought in itself. But as they were
they had value as laws of thought (λεκτά)[135] merely. The Stoics
indeed had a system of immanent determinations of thought, and actually
did a great deal in this direction; for Chrysippus specially developed
and worked out this logical aspect of things, and is stated to have
been a master in it (_supra_, pp. 240, 241). But this development took
a very formal direction; there are the ordinary well-known forms of
inference, five of which are given by Chrysippus, while others give
sometimes more and sometimes fewer. One of them is the hypothetical
syllogism through remotion, “When it is day it is light, but now it is
night and hence it is not light.” These logical forms of thought are
by the Stoics held to be the unproved that requires no proof; but they
are likewise only formal forms which determine no content as such. The
wise man is specially skilful in dialectic, we are told by the Stoics,
for all things, both physical and ethical, are perceived through a
knowledge of logic.[136] But thus they have ascribed this perception
to a subject, without stating who this wise man is (p. 250). Since
objective grounds by which to determine the truth are wanting, the
ultimate decision is attributed to the will of the subject; and this
talk about the wise man consequently has its ground in nothing but
the indefiniteness of the criterion, from which we cannot get to the
determination of content.