Among the Greeks and Romans of the classical age philosophy occupied
the place taken by religion among ourselves. Their appeal was to
reason not to revelation. To what, asks Cicero in his Offices, are we
to look for training in virtue, if not to philosophy? Now, if truth
is believed to rest upon authority it is natural that it should be
impressed upon the mind from the earliest age, since the essential
thing is that it should be believed, but a truth which makes its
appeal to reason must be content to wait till reason is developed. We
are born into the Eastern, Western or Anglican communion or some
other denomination, but it was of his own free choice that the
serious minded young Greek or Roman embraced the tenets of one of the
great sects which divided the world of philosophy. The motive which
led him to do so in the first instance may have been merely the
influence of a friend or a discourse from some eloquent speaker, but
the choice once made was his own choice, and he adhered to it as
such. Conversions from one sect to another were of quite rare
occurrence. A certain Dionysius of Heraclea, who went over from the
Stoics to the Cyrenaics, was ever afterward known as "the deserter."
It was as difficult to be independent in philosophy as it is with us
to be independent in politics. When a young man joined a school, he
committed himself to all its opinions, not only as to the end of
life, which was the main point of division, but as to all questions
on all subjects. The Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics from
the Epicurean; he differed also in his theology and his physics and
his metaphysics. Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought young men
"unfit to hear moral philosophy". And yet it was a question--or
rather the question--of moral philosophy, the answer to which decided
the young man's opinions on all other points. The language which
Cicero sometimes uses about the seriousness of the choice made in
early life and how a young man gets entrammelled by a school before
he is really able to judge, reminds us of what we hear said nowadays
about the danger of a young man's taking orders before his opinions
are formed. To this it was replied that a young man only exercised
the right of private judgment in selecting the authority whom he
should follow, and, having once done that, trusted to him for all the
rest. With the analogue of this contention also we are familiar in
modern times. Cicero allows that there would be something in it, if
the selection of the true philosopher did not above all things
require the philosophic mind. But in those days it was probably the
case, as it is now, that, if a man did not form speculative opinions
in youth, the pressure of affairs would not leave him leisure to do
so later.
The life span of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was from B.C. 347 to
275. He did not begin teaching till 315, at the mature age of forty.
Aristotle had passed away in 322, and with him closed the great
constructive era of Greek thought. The Ionian philosophers had
speculated on the physical constitution of the universe, the
Pythagoreans on the mystical properties of numbers; Heraclitus had
propounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Leucippus had
struck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raised
questions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all the
freedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically worked
them out. The later schools did not add much to the body of
philosophy. What they did was to emphasize different sides of the
doctrine of their predecessors and to drive views to their logical
consequences. The great lesson of Greek philosophy is that it is
worth while to do right irrespective of reward and punishment and
regardless of the shortness of life. This lesson the Stoics so
enforced by the earnestness of their lives and the influence of their
moral teaching that it has become associated more particularly with
them. Cicero, though he always classed himself as an Academic,
exclaims in one place that he is afraid the Stoics are the only
philosophers, and whenever he is combating Epicureanism his language
is that of a Stoic. Some of Vergil's most eloquent passages seem to
be inspired by Stoic speculation. Even Horace, despite his banter
about the sage, in his serious moods borrows the language of the
Stoics. It was they who inspired the highest flights of declamatory
eloquence in Persius and Juvenal. Their moral philosophy affected the
world through Roman law, the great masters of which were brought up
under its influence. So all pervasive indeed was this moral
philosophy of the Stoics that it was read by the Jews of Alexandria
into Moses under the veil of allegory and was declared to be the
inner meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Stoics then did not
add much to the body of Philosophy, they did a great work in
popularising it and bringing it to bear upon life.
An intense practicality was a mark of the later Greek philosophy.
This was common to Stoicism with its rival Epicureanism. Both
regarded philosophy as 'the art of life,' though they differed in
their conception of what that art should be. Widely as the two
schools were opposed to one another, they had also other features in
common. Both were children of an age in which the free city had given
way to monarchies, and personal had taken the place of corporate
life. The question of happiness is no longer, as with Aristotle, and
still more with Plato, one for the state, but for the individual. In
both schools the speculative interest was feeble from the first, and
tended to become feebler as time went on. Both were new departures
from pre-existent schools. Stoicism was bred out of Cynicism, as
Epicureanism out of Cyrenaicism. Both were content to fall back for
their physics upon the pre-Socratic schools, the one adopting the
firm philosophy of Heraclitus, the other the atomic theory of
Democritus. Both were in strong reaction against the abstractions of
Plato and Aristotle, and would tolerate nothing but concrete reality.
The Stoics were quite as materialistic in their own way as the
Epicureans. With regard indeed to the nature of the highest god we
may, with Senaca represent the difference between the two schools as
a question of the senses against the intellect, but we shall see
presently that the Stoics regarded the intellect itself as being a
kind of body.
The Greeks were all agreed that there was an end or aim of life, and
that it was to be called 'happiness,' but at that point their
agreement ended. As to the nature of happiness there was the utmost
variety of opinion. Democritus had made it consist in mental
serenity, Anaxagoras in speculation, Socrates in wisdom, Aristotle in
the practise of virtue with some amount of favour from fortune,
Aristippus simply in pleasure. These were opinions of the
philosophers. But, besides these, there were the opinions of ordinary
men, as shown by their lives rather than by their language. Zeno's
contribution to thought on the subject does not at first sight appear
illuminating. He said that the end was 'to live consistently,' the
implication doubtless being that no life but the passionless life of
reason could ultimately be consistent with itself. Cleanthes, his
immediate successor in the school, is credited with having added the
words 'with nature,' thus completing the well-known Stoic formula
that the end is 'to live consistently with nature.'
It was assumed by the Greeks that the ways of nature were 'the ways
of pleasantness,' and that 'all her paths' were 'peace.' This may
seem to us a startling assumption, but that is because we do not mean
by 'nature' the same thing as they did. We connect the term with the
origin of a thing, they connected it rather with the end; by the
'natural state' we mean a state of savagery, they meant the highest
civilization; we mean by a thing's nature what it is or has been,
they meant what it ought to become under the most favourable
conditions; not the sour crab, but the mellow glory of the Hesperides
worthy to be guarded by a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks the
natural apple. Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that the State is
a natural product, because it is evolved out of social relations
which exist by nature. Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous term to
the Greeks no less than to ourselves, but in the sense with which we
are now concerned, the nature of anything was defined by the
Peripatetics as 'the end of its becoming.' Another definition of
theirs puts the matter still more clearly. 'What each thing is when
its growth has been completed, that we declare to be the nature of
each thing'.
Following out this conception the Stoics identified a life in
accordance with nature with a life in accordance with the highest
perfection to which man could attain. Now, as man was essentially a
rational animal, his work as man lay in living the rational life. And
the perfection of reason was virtue. Hence the ways of nature were no
other than the ways of virtue. And so it came about that the Stoic
formula might be expressed in a number of different ways which yet
all amounted to the same thing. The end was to live the virtuous
life, or to live consistently, or to live in accordance with nature,
or to live rationally.