PHYSIC

We have now before us the main facts with regard to the Stoic view of

man's nature, but we have yet to see in what setting they were put.

What was the Stoic outlook upon the universe? The answer to this

question is supplied by their Physic.

There were, according to the Stoics, two first principles of all

things, the active and the passive. The passive was that unqualified

being which is known as Matter. The active was the Logos, or reason

in it, which is God. This, it was held, eternally pervades matter and

creates all things. This dogma, laid down by Zeno, was repeated after

him by the subsequent heads of the school.

There were then two first principles, but there were not two causes

of things. The active principle alone was cause, the other was mere

material for it to work on--inert, senseless, destitute in itself of

all shape and qualities, but ready to assume any qualities or shape.

Matter was defined as that out of which anything is produced. The

Prime Matter, or unqualified being, was eternal and did not admit of

increase or decrease, but only of change. It was the substance or

being of all things that are.

The Stoics, it will be observed, used the term "matter" with the same

confusing ambiguity with which we use it ourselves, now for sensible

objects which have shape and other qualities, now for the abstract

conception of matter, which is devoid of all qualities.

Both these first principles, it must be understood, were conceived of

as bodies, though without form, the one everywhere interpenetrating

the other. To say that the passive principle, or matter, is a body

comes easy to us, because of the familiar confusion adverted to

above. But how could the active principle, or God, be conceived of as

a body? The answer to this question may sound paradoxical. It is

because God is a spirit. A spirit in its original sense meant air in

motion. Now the active principle was not air, but it was something

which bore an analogy to it--namely aether. Aether in motion might be

called a 'spirit' as well as air in motion. It was in this sense that

Chrysippus defined the thing that is, to be a spirit moving itself

into and out of itself, or spirit moving itself to and fro.

From the two first principles which are ungenerated and

indestructible must be distinguished the four elements which, though

ultimate for us, yet were produced in the beginning by God and are

destined some day to be reabsorbed into the divine nature. These with

the Stoics were the same which had been accepted since

Empedocles--namely earth, air, fire and water. The elements, like the

two first principles were bodies; unlike them, they were declared to

have shape as well as extension.

An element was defined as that out of which things at first come into

being and into which they are at last resolved. In this relation did

the four elements stand to all the compound bodies which the universe

contained. The terms earth, air, fire and water had to be taken in a

wide sense: earth meaning all that was of the nature of earth, air

all that was of the nature of air and so on. Thus, in the human

frame, the bones and sinews pertained to earth.

The four qualities of matter--hot, cold, moist and dry--were

indicative of the presence of the four elements. Fire was the source

of heat, air of cold, water of moisture, and earth of dryness.

Between them, the four elements made up the unqualified being called

Matter. All animals and other compound natures on earth had in them

representatives of the four great physical constituents of the

universe, but the moon, according to Chrysippus, consisted only of

fire and air, while the sun was pure fire.

While all compound bodies were resolvable into the four elements,

there were important differences among the elements, themselves. Two

of them, fire and air, were light; the other two, water and earth,

were heavy. By 'light' was meant that which tends away from its own

centre, by 'heavy,' that which, tends towards it. The two light

elements stood to the two heavy ones in much the same relation as the

active to the passive principle generally. But further, fire had such

a primary as entitles it, if the definition of element were pressed,

to be considered alone worthy of the name. For the three other

elements arose out of it and were to be again resolved into it.

We should obtain a wholly wrong impression of what Bishop Berkeley

calls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in this

connection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Let

us rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign and

beatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial

life. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the one

destructive, the other what we may call 'constructive,' and which he

called 'artistic'. This latter kind of fire, which was known as

aether, was the substance of the heavenly bodies, as it was also of

the soul of animals and of the 'nature' of plants. Chrysippus,

following Heraclitus, taught that the elements passed into one

another by a process of condensation and rarefaction. Fire first

became solidified into air, then air into water and lastly water into

earth. The process of dissolution took place in the reverse order,

earth being rarefied into water, water into air, and air into fire.

It is allowable to see in this old world doctrine an anticipation of

the modern idea of different states of matter--the solid, the liquid,

and the gaseous, with a fourth beyond the gaseous which science can

still only guess at, and in which matter seems almost to merge into

spirit.

Each of the four elements had its own abode in the universe.

Outermost of all was the ethereal 'fire' which was divided into two

spheres: first that of the fixed stars and next that of the planets.

Below this lay the sphere of 'air', below this again that of 'water',

and lowest or in other words, most central of all was the sphere of

'earth', the solid foundation of the whole structure. Water might be

said to be above earth because nowhere was there water to be found

without earth beneath it, but the surface of water was always

equidistant from the centre, whereas earth had prominences which rose

above water.

When we say that the Stoics regarded the universe as a plenum, the

reader must understand by 'the universe' the Cosmos or ordered whole.

Within this there was no emptiness owing to the pressure of the

celestial upon the terrestrial sphere. But outside of this lay the

infinite void without beginning, middle, or end. This occupied a very

ambiguous position In their scheme. It was not being, for being was

confined to body and yet it was there. It was in fact nothing, and

that was why it was infinite. For as nothing cannot be bound to any

thing, so neither can there be any bound to nothing. But while

bodiless itself, it had the capacity to contain body, a fact which

enabled it, despite its non-entity, to serve, as we shall see, a

useful purpose.

Did the Stoics then regard the universe as finite or as infinite? In

answering this question we must distinguish our terms, as they did.

The All, they said, was infinite, but the Whole was finite. For the

'All' was the cosmos and the void, whereas the 'Whole' was the cosmos

only. This distinction we may suppose to have originated with the

later members of the school. For Appolodorus noted the ambiguity of

the word 'All' as meaning,

(1) the cosmos only,

(2) cosmos + void

If then by the term "universe" we understand the cosmos, or ordered

whole, we must say that the Stoics regarded the universe as finite.

All being and all body, which was the same thing with being, had

necessarily bounds, it was only not being, which was boundless.

Another distinction, due this time to Chrysippus himself, which the

Stoics found it convenient to draw, was between the three words

'void,' 'place' and 'space'. Void was defined as 'the absence of

body', place was that which was occupied by body, the term 'space'

was reserved for that which was partly occupied and partly

unoccupied. As there was no corner of the cosmos unfilled by body,

space, it will be seen, was another name for the All. Place was

compared to a vessel that was full, void to one that was empty, and

space to the vast wine-cask, such as that in which Diogenes made his

home, which was kept partly fully, but in which there was always room

for more. The last comparison must of course not be pressed. For if

space be a cask, it is one without top, bottom or sides.

But while the Stoics regarded our universe as an island of being in

an ocean of void, they did not admit the possibility that other such

islands might exist beyond our ken. The spectacle of the starry

heavens, which presented itself nightly to their gaze in all the

brilliancy of a southern sky--that was all there was of being, beyond

that lay nothingness. Democritus or the Epicureans might dream of

other worlds, but the Stoics contended for the unity of the cosmos as

staunchly as the Mahometans for the unity of God, for with them the

cosmos was God.

In shape they conceived of it as spherical, on the ground that the

sphere was the perfect figure and was also the best adapted for

motion. Not that the universe as a whole moved. The earth lay in its

centre, spherical and motionless, and round it coursed the sun, moon,

and planets, fixed each in its respective sphere as in so many

concentric rings, while the outermost ring of all, which contained

the fixed stars, wheeled round the rest with an inconceivable

velocity.

The tendency of all things in the universe to the centre kept the

earth fixed in the middle as being subject to an equal pressure on

every side. The same cause also, according to Zeno, kept the universe

itself at rest in the void. But in an infinite void, it could make no

difference whether the whole were at rest or in motion. It may have

been a desire to escape the notion of a migratory whole which led

Zeno to broach the curious doctrine that the universe has no weight,

as being composed of elements whereof two are heavy and two are

light. Air and fire did indeed tend to the centre like everything

else in the cosmos, but not till they had reached their natural home.

Till then they were of an upward-growing nature. It appears then that

the upward and downward tendencies of the elements were held to

neutralise one another and to leave the universe devoid of weight.

The universe was the only thing which was perfect in itself, the one

thing which was an end in itself. All other things were perfect

indeed as parts, when considered with reference to the whole, but

were none of them ends in themselves, unless man could be deemed so

who was born to contemplate the universe and imitate its perfections.

Thus, then, did the Stoics envisage the universe on its physical

side--as one, finite, fixed in space, but revolving round its own

centre, earth, beautiful beyond all things, and perfect as a whole.

But it was impossible for this order and beauty to exist without

mind. The universe was pervaded by intelligence as man's body is

pervaded by his soul. But as the human soul though everywhere present

in the body is not present everywhere in the same degree, so it was

with the world-soul. The human soul presents itself not only as

intellect, but also in the lower manifestations of sense, growth, and

cohesion. It is the soul which is the cause of the plant life, which

displays itself more particularly in the nails and hair; it is the

soul also which causes cohesion among the parts of the solid

substances such as bones and sinews, that make up our frame. In the

same way the world-soul displayed itself in rational beings as

intellect, in the lower animals as mere souls, in plants as nature or

growth, and in inorganic substances as 'holding' or cohesion. To this

lowest stage add change, and you have growth or plant nature;

super-add to this phantasy and impulse and you rise to the soul of

irrational animals; at a yet higher stage you reach the rational and

discursive intellect, which is peculiar to man among mortal natures.

We have spoken of soul as the cause of the plant life in our bodies,

but plants were not admitted by the Stoics to be possessed of soul in

the strict sense. What animated them was 'nature' or, as we have

called it above, 'growth'. Nature, in this sense of the principle of

growth, was defined by the Stoics as 'a constructive fire, proceeding

in a regular way to production,' or 'a fiery spirit endowed with

artistic skill'. That Nature was an artist needed no proof, since it

was her handiwork that human art essayed to copy. But she was an

artist who combined the useful with the pleasant, aiming at once at

beauty and convenience. In the widest sense, Nature was another name

for Providence, or the principle which held the universe together,

but, as the term is now being employed, it stood for that degree of

existence which is above cohesion and below soul. From this point of

view, it was defined as "a cohesion subject to self originated change

in accordance with seminal reasons effecting and maintaining its

results in definite times, and reproducing in the offspring the

characteristics of the parent". This sounds about as abstract as

Herbert Spencer's definition of life, but it must be borne in mind

that nature was all the time a 'spirit', and as such a body. It was a

body of a less subtle essence than soul. Similarly, when the Stoics

spoke of cohesion, they are not to be taken as referring to some

abstract principle like attraction. 'Cohesions,' said Chrysippus,

'are nothing else than airs, for it is by these that bodies are held

together, and of the individual qualities of things which are held

together by cohesion, it is the air which is the compressing cause

which in iron is called "hardness", in stone "thickness" and in

solver "whiteness"'. Not only solidarity then, but also colours,

which Zeno called 'the first schematisms' of matter were regarded as

due to the mysterious agency of air. In fact, qualities in general

were but blasts and tensions of the air, which gave form and figure

to the inert matter underlying them.

As the man is in one sense the soul, in another the body, and in a

third the union of both, so it was with the cosmos. The word was used

in three senses--

(1) God

(2) the arrangement of the stars, etc.

(3) the combination of both.

The cosmos as identical with God was described as an individual made

up of all being who is incorruptible and ungenerated, the fashioner

of the ordered frame of the universe, who at certain periods of time

absorbs all being into himself and again generates it from himself.

Thus the cosmos on its external side was doomed to perish and the

mode of its destruction was to be by fire, a doctrine which has been

stamped upon the world's belief down to the present day. What was to

bring about this consummation was the soul of the universe becoming

too big for its body, which it would eventually swallow up

altogether. In the efflagration, when everything went back to the

primeval aether, the universe would be pure soul and alive equally

through and through. In this subtle and attenuated state, it would

require more room than before and so expand into the void,

contracting again when another period of cosmic generation had set

in. Hence the Stoic definition of the Void or Infinite as that into

which the cosmos is resolved at the efflagration.

In this theory of the contraction of the universe out of an ethereal

state and ultimate return to the same condition one sees a

resemblance to the modern scientific hypothesis of the origin of our

planetary system out of the solar nebula, and its predestined end in

the same. Especially is this the case with the form in which the

theory was held by Cleanthes, who pictured the heavenly bodies as

hastening to their own destruction by dashing themselves, like so

many gigantic moths, into the sun. Cleanthes however did not conceive

mere mechanical force to be at work in this matter. The grand

apotheosis of suicide which he foresaw was a voluntary act; for the

heavenly bodies were Gods and were willing to lose their own in a

larger life.

Thus all the deities except Zeus were mortal, or at all events,

perishable. Gods, like men, were destined to have an end some day.

They would melt in the great furnace of being as though they were

made of wax or tin. Zeus then would be left alone with his own

thoughts, or as the Stoics sometimes put it, Zeus would fall back

upon Providence. For by Providence they meant the leading principle

or mind of the whole, and by Zeus, as distinguished from Providence,

this mind together with the cosmos, which was to it as body. In the

efflagration the two would be fused into one in the single substance

of aether. And then in the fulness of time there would be a

restitution of all things. Everything would come round regularly

again exactly as it had been before.

To us who have been taught to pant for progress, this seems a dreary

prospect. But the Stoics were consistent Optimists, and did not ask

for a change in what was best. They were content that the one drama

of existence should enjoy a perpetual run without perhaps too nice a

consideration for the actors. Death intermitted life, but did not end

it. For the candle of life, which was extinguished now, would be

kindled again hereafter. Being and not being came round in endless

succession for all save him, into whom all being was resolved, and

out of whom it emerged again, as from the vortex of some aeonian

Maelstrom.