STOIC SELF-CONTROL BY LAW
I
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF APPERCEPTION
The shortest way to understand the Stoic principle is through the
psychological doctrine of apperception. According to this now
universally accepted doctrine, the mind is not an empty cabinet into
which ready-made impressions of external things are dumped. The mind is
an active process; and the meaning and value of any sensation presented
from without is determined by the reaction upon it of the ideas and aims
that are dominant within. This doctrine has revolutionised psychology
and pedagogy, and when rightly introduced into the personal life proves
even more revolutionary there. Stoicism works this doctrine for all that
it is worth. Christian Science and kindred popular cults of the present
day are perhaps working it for rather more than it is worth.
Translated into simple everyday terms, this doctrine in its application
to the personal life means that the value of any external fact or
possession or experience depends on the way in which we take it. Take
riches, for example. Stocks and bonds, real estate and mortgages, money
and bank accounts, in themselves do not make a man either rich or poor.
They may enrich or they may impoverish his personality. It is not until
they are taken up into the mind, thought over, related to one's general
scheme of conduct, made the basis of one's purposes and plans, that they
become a factor in the personal life. Obviously the same amount of
money, a hundred thousand dollars, may be worked over into personal life
in a great variety of ways. One man is made proud by it. Another is made
lazy. Another is made hard-hearted. Another is made avaricious for more.
Another is fired with the desire to speculate. Another is filled with
anxiety lest he may lose it. All these are obviously impoverished by the
so-called wealth which they possess. To rich men's wives and children,
whose wealth comes without the strenuous exertion and close human
contact involved in earning it, it generally works their personal
impoverishment in one or more of these fatal ways. For wealth, in an
indolent, self-indulgent, vain, conceited, ostentatious, unsympathetic
mind, takes on the colour of these odious qualities, and becomes a
curse to its possessor; just because he or she is cursed with these evil
propensities already, and the wealth simply adds fuel to the
preexistent, though perhaps latent and smouldering flames.
On the other hand one man is made grateful for the wealth he has been
able to accumulate. Another is made more sympathetic. Another is made
generous. Another is urged into the larger public service his
independent means makes possible. Another is lifted up into a sense of
responsibility for its right use. On the whole the men and women who
earn their money honestly are usually affected in one or more of these
beneficial ways, and their wealth becomes an enrichment of their
personality.
Now it is impossible that this hundred thousand dollars should get into
any man's mind, and become a mental state, without its being mixed with
one or other of these mental, emotional, and volitional accompaniments.
The mental state, in other words, is a compound, of which the external
fact, in this case the hundred thousand dollars, is the least important
ingredient. It is so unimportant a factor that the Stoics pronounced it
indifferent. The tone and temper in which we accept our riches, the ends
to which we devote them, the spirit in which we hold them, the way in
which we spend them, are so vastly more important than the mere fact of
having them, that by comparison, the fact itself seems indifferent. Like
all strong statements, this is doubtless an exaggeration. You cannot
have just the same mental state without riches that you can have with
them. The external fact is a factor, though a relatively small one, in
the composite mental state. The virtues of a rich man are not precisely
the same as the virtues of a poor man. Yet the Stoic paradox is very
much nearer the truth than the statement of the average man, that
external things are the whole, or even the most important part of our
mental states.
The same thing is true of health and sickness. Health often makes one
careless, insensitive, negligent of duty; while sickness often makes one
conscientious, considerate, faithful, and thus more useful and efficient
than his healthy brother. Popularity often puffs up with pride; while
persecution, by humbling, prepares the heart for truer blessedness.
Hence whether an external fact is good or evil, depends on how we take
it, what we make of it, the state of mind and heart and will into which
it enters as a factor; and that in turn depends, the Stoic tells us, on
ourselves, and is under our control Stoicism is fundamentally this
psychological doctrine of apperception, carried over and applied in the
field of the personal life,--the doctrine, namely, that no external
thing alone can affect us for good or evil, until we have woven it into
the texture of our mental life, painted it with the colour of our
dominant mood and temper, and stamped it with the approval of our will.
Thus everything except a slight residuum is through and through mental,
our own product, the expression of what we are and desire to be. The
only difference between Stoicism and Christian Science at this point is
that Stoicism recognises the material element; though it does so only to
minimise it, and pronounce it indifferent. Christian Science denies that
there is any physical fact, or even the raw material out of which to
make one. All is merely mental, says the consistent Christian Scientist
with the toothache. There is no matter there to ache. The Stoic, truer
to the facts, and in not less but more heroic spirit declares: "There is
matter, but it doesn't matter if there is." The toothache can be taken
as a spur to greater fortitude and equanimity than the man whose teeth
are all sound has had opportunity to practically exemplify; and so the
total mental state, toothache-borne-with-fortitude, may be positively
good.
This doctrine that external things never in themselves constitute a
mental state; that they are consequently indifferent; that the
all-important contribution is made by the mind itself; that this
contribution from the mind is what gives the tone and determines the
worth of the total mental state; and that this contribution is
exclusively our own affair and may be brought entirely under our own
control;--this is the first and most fundamental Stoic principle. If we
have grasped this principle, we are prepared to read intelligently and
sympathetically the otherwise startling and paradoxical deliverances of
the Stoic masters.
II
SELECTIONS FROM THE STOIC SCRIPTURES
First let us listen to Epictetus, the slave, the Stoic of the cottage as
he has been called:--
"Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by
which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold on the
affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be borne;
but rather by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought
up with you, and thus you will lay hold on it as it is to be borne."
Here the handle is a homely but effective figure for the mass of mental
association into which the external fact of a brother who acts unjustly
is introduced before he actually enters our mental state, and determines
how we shall feel and act.
"If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would
certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your mind
to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?" The reviling does
not become a determining factor in my own mental state unless I choose
to let it. If I feel humiliated and stung by it, it is because I am weak
and foolish enough to stake my estimate of myself, and my consequent
happiness, upon what somebody who does not know me says about me, rather
than on what I, who know myself better than anybody else, actually
think. A boy at Phillips Andover Academy once drew this distinction very
adroitly for another boy. There had been a free fight among the boys
causing a great deal of disturbance, and Principal Bancroft had traced
the beginning of it to an insulting remark on the part of the boy in
question. Dr. Bancroft accused him of beginning the trouble. "No, sir,"
said the boy, "I did not begin it. The other fellow began it." "Well,"
said Principal Bancroft, "you tell me precisely what took place, and I
will decide who began it." "Oh," replied the boy, "I simply called him a
'darned' fool, and he took offence." Now if the other boy had been a
Stoic, he would not have taken offence, and the first boy might have
called him a fool with impunity. Imputing Stoicism to that extent to
other people, however, is very dangerous business. Stoicism is a
doctrine to be strictly applied to ourselves, but never imputed to other
people, least of all to the people we wish to abuse and revile.
Epictetus again states his doctrine most explicitly on the subject of
terrors. "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they
take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible else it would have
appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death,
that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or
grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to
our views."
Again he makes a sharp distinction between what is in our power,--that
is, what we think about things; and what are not in our power,--that is
external facts. "There are things which are within our power, and there
are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion,
aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own.
Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one
word, whatever are not properly our own affairs."
"Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted,
unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted,
alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature
dependent, and seek for your own that which is really controlled by
others, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed,
you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own
only that which is your own, and view what belongs to others just as it
really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you;
you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do
nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an
enemy, nor will you suffer any harm."
All this is simply carrying out the principle that we need not concern
ourselves about purely external things, for those things pure and simple
can never get into our minds, or affect us one way or the other. The
only things that enter into us are things as we think about them, facts
as we feel about them, forces as we react upon them, and these thoughts,
feelings, and reactions are our own affairs; and if we do not think
serenely, feel tranquilly, and act freely with reference to them, it is
not the fault of external things, but of ourselves.
In his discourse on tranquillity Epictetus gives us the same counsel.
"Consider, you who are about to undergo trial, what you wish to
preserve, and in what to succeed. For if you wish to preserve a mind in
harmony with nature, you are entirely safe; everything goes well; you
have no trouble on your hands. While you wish to preserve that freedom
which belongs to you, and are contented with that, for what have you
longer to be anxious? For who is the master of things like these? Who
can take them away? If you wish to be a man of modesty and fidelity, who
shall prevent you? If you wish not to be restrained or compelled, who
shall compel you to desires contrary to your principles? to aversions
contrary to your opinion? The judge, perhaps, will pass a sentence
against you which he thinks formidable; but can he likewise make you
receive it with shrinking? Since, then, desire and aversion are in your
power, for what have you to be anxious?"
Epictetus bids us meet difficulties in the same way. "Difficulties are
things that show what men are. For the future, in case of any
difficulty, remember that God, like a gymnastic trainer, has pitted you
against a rough antagonist. For what end? That you may be an Olympic
conqueror; and this cannot be without toil. No man, in my opinion, has a
more profitable difficulty on his hands than you have, provided you but
use it as an athletic champion uses his antagonist."
Epictetus does not shrink from the logic of his teaching in its
application to the sorrows of others, though here it is tempered by a
concession to the weakness of ordinary mortals. "When you see a person
weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead,
or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do
not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things.
But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to
say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it
does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which
afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him
sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care
that you do not lament internally also." At this point, if not before,
we feel that Stoicism is doing violence to the nobler feelings of our
nature, and are prepared to break with it. Stoicism is too hard and cold
and individualistic to teach us our duty, or even to leave us free to
act out our best inclinations, toward our neighbour. We may be as
Stoical as we please in our own troubles and afflictions; but let us
beware how we carry over its icy distinctions into our interpretation of
our neighbour's suffering.
I have drawn most of my illustrations from Epictetus, because this
resignation comes with rather better grace from a poor, lame man, who
has been a slave, and who lives on the barest necessities of life, than
from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the wealthy courtier Seneca. Yet
the most distinctive utterances of these men teach the same lesson.
Seneca attributes it to his pilot in the famous prayer, "Oh, Neptune,
you may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but whatever
happens, I shall keep my rudder true." Marcus Aurelius says: "Let the
part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements
in the flesh, whether of pleasure or pain; and let it not unite itself
with them, but let it circumscribe itself, and limit those effects to
their parts." "Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold
or warm, if thou art doing thy duty, and whether dying or doing
something else. For it is one of the acts of life,--this act by which we
die; it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in
hand." "External things touch not the soul, not in the least degree."
"Remember on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this
principle: that this is not a misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good
fortune."
The most recent prophet of Stoicism is Maurice Maeterlinck. In "Wisdom
and Destiny," he says:--
"The event itself is pure water that flows from the pitcher of fate, and
seldom has it either savour or perfume or colour. But even as the soul
may be wherein it seeks shelter, so will the event become joyous or sad,
become tender or hateful, become deadly or quick with life. To those
round about us there happen incessant and countless adventures, whereof
every one, it would seem, contains a germ of heroism; but the adventure
passes away, and heroic deed there is none. But when Jesus Christ met
the Samaritan, met a few children, an adulterous woman, then did
humanity rise three times in succession to the level of God."
"It might almost be said that there happens to men only that they
desire. It is true that on certain external events our influence is of
the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events
shall become in ourselves--in other words, on their spiritual part. The
life of most men will be saddened or lightened by the thing that may
chance to befall them,--in the men whom I speak of, whatever may happen
is lit up by their inward life. If you have been deceived, it is not the
deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it gave birth in
your soul, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this
forgiveness,--by these shall your eyes see more clearly than if all men
had ever been faithful. But if, by this act of deceit, there have come
not more simpleness, loftier faith, wider range to your love, then have
you been deceived in vain, and may truly say nothing has happened."
"Let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the
nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the
shape of our everyday thoughts; and deeds of heroism are but offered to
those who, for many long years, have been heroes in obscurity and
silence. And whether you climb up the mountain or go down the hill to
the valley, whether you journey to the end of the world or merely walk
round your house, none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of
fate. If Judas go forth to-night, it is toward Judas his steps will
tend, nor will chance for betrayal be lacking; but let Socrates open his
door,--he shall find Socrates asleep on the threshold before him, and
there will be occasion for wisdom. We become that which we discover in
the sorrows and joys that befall us; and the least expected caprices of
fate soon mould themselves to our thought. It is in our past that
Destiny finds all her weapons, her vestments, her jewels. A sorrow your
soul has changed into sweetness, to indulgence or patient smiles, is a
sorrow that shall never return without spiritual ornament; and a fault
or defect you have looked in the face can harm you no more. All that has
thus been transformed can belong no more to the hostile powers. Real
fatality exists only in certain external disasters--as disease,
accident, the sudden death of those we love; but inner fatality there is
none. Wisdom has will power sufficient to rectify all that does not deal
death to the body; it will even at times invade the narrow domain of
external fatality. Even when the deed has been done, the misfortune has
happened, it still rests with ourselves to deny her the least influence
on that which shall come to pass in our soul. She may strike at the
heart that is eager for good, but still is she helpless to keep back the
light that shall stream to this heart from the error acknowledged, the
pain undergone. It is not in her power to prevent the soul from
transforming each single affliction into thoughts, into feelings, and
treasure she dare not profane. Be her empire never so great over all
things external, she always must halt when she finds on the threshold a
silent guardian of the inner life. For even as triumph of dictators and
consuls could be celebrated only in Rome, so can the true triumph of
Fate take place nowhere save in our soul."
It would be easy to cite passage after passage in which the great
masters of Stoicism ring the changes on this idea, that the external
thing, whether it be good or evil, cannot get into the fortified citadel
of my mind, and therefore cannot touch me. Before it can touch me it
must first be incorporated into my mind. In the very act of
incorporation it undergoes a transformation, which in the perverse man
may change the best external things into poison and bitterness; and in
the sage is able to convert the worst of external facts into virtue,
glory, and honour. Out of indifferent external matter, thinking makes
the world in which we live; and if it is not a good world, the fault is,
not with the indifferent external matters,--such as, to take Epictetus's
enumeration of them, "wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain,
which lie between the virtues and the vices,"--but in our weak and
erroneous thinking.
III
THE STOIC REVERENCE FOR UNIVERSAL LAW
The first half of the Stoic doctrine is that we give our world the
colour of our thoughts. The second half of Stoicism is concerned with
what these thoughts of ours shall be. The first half of the doctrine
alone would leave us in crude fantastic Cynicism,--the doctrine out of
which the broader and deeper Stoic teaching took its rise. The Cynic
paints the world in the flaring colours of his undisciplined, individual
caprice. Modern apostles of the essential Stoic principle incline to
paint the world in the roseate hues of a merely optional optimism. They
want to be well, and happy, and serene, and self-satisfied; they think
they are; and thinking makes them so. If Stoicism had been as
superficial as that, as capricious, and temperamental, and
individualistic, it would not have lasted as it has for more than two
thousand years. The Stoic thought had substance, content, objective
reality, as unfortunately most of the current phases of popular
philosophy have not. This objective and universal principle the Stoic
found in law. We must think things, not as we would like to have them,
which is the optimism of the fabled ostrich, with its head in the sand;
not in some vague, general phrases which mean nothing, which is the
optimism of mysticism: but in the hard, rigid terms of universal law.
Everything that happens is part of the one great whole. The law of the
whole determines the nature and worth of the part. Seen from the point
of view of the whole, every part is necessary, and therefore
good,--everything except, as Cleanthes says in his hymn, "what the
wicked do in their foolishness." The typical evils of life can all be
brought under the Stoic formula, under some beneficial law; all, that
is, except sin. That particular form of evil was not satisfactorily
dealt with until the advent of Christianity.
Take evils of accident to begin with. An aged man slips on the ice,
falls, breaks a bone, and is left, like Epictetus, lame for life. The
particular application of the law of gravitation in this case has
unfortunate results for the individual. But the law is good. We should
not know how to get along in the world without this beneficent law.
Shall we repine and complain against the law that holds the stars and
planets in their courses, shapes the mountains, sways the tides, brings
down the rain, and draws the rivers to the sea, turning ten thousand
mill-wheels of industry as it goes rejoicing on its way; shall we
complain against this law because in one instance in a thousand million
it chances to throw down an individual, which happens to be me, and
breaks a bone or two of mine, and leaves me for the brief span of my
remaining pilgrimage with a limping gait? If Epictetus could say to his
cruel master under torture, "You will break my leg if you keep on," and
then when it broke could smilingly add, "I told you so,"--cannot we
endure with fortitude, and even grateful joy, the incidental inflictions
which so beneficent a master as the great law of gravitation in its
magnificent impartiality may see fit to mete out to us?
A current of electricity, seeking its way from sky to earth, finds on
some particular occasion the body of a beloved husband, a dear son, an
honoured father of dependent children, the best conductor between the
air and the earth, and kills the person through whose body it takes its
swift and fatal course. Yet this law has no malevolence in its impartial
heart. On the contrary the beneficent potency of the laws of electricity
is so great that our largest hopes for the improvement of our economic
condition rest on its unexplored resources.
A group of bacteria, ever alert to find matter not already appropriated
and held in place by vital forces stronger than their own, find their
food and breeding place within a human body, and subject our friend or
our child to weeks of fever, and perchance to death. Yet we cannot call
evil the great biological law that each organism shall seek its meat
from God wherever it can find it. Indeed were it not for these
micro-organisms, and their alertness to seize upon and transform into
their own living substance everything morbid and unwholesome, the whole
earth would be nothing but a vast charnel house reeking with the
intolerable stench of the undisintegrated and unburied dead.
The most uncompromising exponent of this second half of the Stoic
doctrine in the modern world is Immanuel Kant. According to him the
whole worth and dignity of life turns not on external fortune, nor even
on good natural endowments, but on our internal reaction, the reverence
of our will for universal law. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the
world, or even out of it, which can be called good without
qualification, except a Good Will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the
other _talents_ of the mind, however they may be named, or courage,
resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly
good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also
become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of
them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is
not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches,
honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with
one's condition which is called happiness, inspire pride and often
presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of
these on the mind."
"Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone
have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is,
according to principles; _i.e._ have a will."
"Consequently the only good action is that which is done out of pure
reverence for universal law. This categorical imperative of duty is
expressed as follows: 'Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become
by thy will a Universal Law of Nature.' And since every other rational
being must conduct himself on the same rational principle that holds for
me, I am bound to respect him as I do myself. Hence the second practical
imperative is: 'So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person
or in that of any other, in every case as an end, never as means only.'"
In Kant Stoicism reaches its climax. Law and the will are everything:
possessions, even graces are nothing.
IV
THE STOIC SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
The problem of evil was the great problem of the Stoic, as the problem
of pleasure was the problem of the Epicurean. To this problem the Stoic
gives substantially four answers, with all of which we are already
somewhat familiar:--
First: Only that is evil which we choose to regard as such. To quote
Marcus Aurelius once more on this fundamental point: "Consider that
everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when
thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner who has doubled the
promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay."
"Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint: I
have been harmed. Take away the complaint: I have been harmed, and the
harm is done away."
Second: Since virtue or integrity is the only good, nothing but the loss
of that can be a real evil. When this is present, nothing of real value
can be lacking. A Stoic then says, "Virtue suffers no vacancy in the
place she inhabits; she fills the whole soul, takes away the
sensibility of any loss, and is herself sufficient." "As the stars hide
their diminished heads before the brightness of the sun, so pains,
afflictions, and injuries are all crushed and dissipated by the
greatness of virtue; whenever she shines, everything but what borrows
its splendour from her disappears, and all manner of annoyances have no
more effect upon her than a shower of rain upon the sea." "It does not
matter what you bear, but how you bear it." "Where a man can live at
all, he can live well." "I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must
go into exile. Does any man hinder me from going with smiles and
cheerfulness and contentment?" "Life itself is neither good nor evil,
but only a place for good and evil." "It is the edge and temper of the
blade that make a good sword, not the richness of the scabbard; and so
it is not money and possessions that make a man considerable, but his
virtue." "They are amusing fellows who are proud of things which are not
in our power. A man says: I am better than you for I possess much land,
and you are wasting with hunger. Another says: I am of consular rank;
another: I have curly hair. But a horse does not say to a horse: I am
superior to you, for I possess much fodder and much barley, and my bits
are of gold, and my harness is embroidered; but he says: I am swifter
than you. And every animal is better or worse from his own merit or his
own badness. Is there then no virtue in man only, and must we look to
our hair, and our clothes, and to our ancestors?" "Let our riches
consist in coveting nothing, and our peace in fearing nothing."
Third: What seems evil to the individual is good for the whole: and
since we are members of the whole is good for us. "Must my leg be
lamed?" the Stoic asks. "Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg
find fault with the world? Wilt thou not willingly surrender it for the
whole? Know you not how small a part you are compared with the whole?"
"If a good man had foreknowledge of what would happen, he would
cooeperate toward his own sickness and death and mutilation, since he
knows that these things are assigned to him according to the universal
arrangement, and that the whole is superior to the part."
Fourth: Trial brings out our best qualities, is "stuff to try the soul's
strength on," and "educe the man," as Browning puts it. This
interpretation of evil as a means of bringing out the higher moral
qualities, though not peculiar to Stoicism, was very congenial to their
system, and appears frequently in their writings. "Just as we must
understand when it is said that AEsculapius prescribed to this man horse
exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, so we must
understand it when it is said that the nature of the universe prescribed
to this man disease, or mutilation, or loss of anything of the kind."
"Calamity is the touchstone of a brave mind, that resolves to live and
die master of itself. Adversity is the better for us all, for it is
God's mercy to show the world their errors, and that the things they
fear and covet are neither good nor evil, being the common and
promiscuous lot of good men and bad."
V
THE STOIC PARADOXES
A good test of one's appreciation of the Stoic position is whether or
not one can see the measure of truth their paradoxes contain.
The first paradox is that there are no degrees in vice. In the words of
the Stoic, "The man who is a hundred furlongs from Canopus, and the man
who is only one, are both equally not in Canopus."
One of the few bits of moral counsel which I remember from the infant
class in the Sunday-school runs as follows:--
"It is a sin
To steal a pin:
Much more to steal
A greater thing."
This, in spite of its exquisite lyrical expression, the Stoic would
flatly deny. The theft of a pin, and the defalcation of a bank cashier
for a hundred thousand dollars; a cross word to a dog, and a course of
conduct which breaks a woman's heart, are from the Stoic standpoint
precisely on a level. For it is not the consequences but the form of our
action that is the important thing. It is not how we make other people
feel as a result of our act, but how we ourselves think of it, as we
propose to do it, or after it is done, that determines its goodness or
badness. If I steal a pin, I violate the universal law just as clearly
and absolutely as though I stole the hundred thousand dollars. I can no
more look with deliberate approval on the cross word to a dog, than on
the breaking of a woman's heart. There are things that do not admit of
degrees. We must either fire our gun off or not fire it. We cannot fire
part of the charge. We want either an absolutely good egg for breakfast,
or no egg at all. One that is partially good, or on the line between
goodness and badness, we send back as altogether bad. If there is a
little round hole in a pane of glass, cut by a bullet, we reject the
whole pane as imperfect, just as though a big jagged hole had been made
in it by a brickbat. We get an echo of this paradox in the statement of
St. James, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in
one point, he is guilty of all."
This paradox becomes plain, self-evident truth, the moment we admit the
Stoic position that not external things, and their appeal to our
sensibility, but our internal attitudes toward universal law, are the
points on which our virtue hangs. Either we intend to obey the universal
law of nature or we do not; and between the intention of obedience and
the intention of disobedience there is no middle ground.
Second: The wise man, the Stoic sage, is absolutely perfect, the
complete master of himself, and rightfully the ruler of the world. If
everything depends on our thought, and our thought is in tune with the
universal law, then obviously we are perfect. Beyond such complete inner
response to the universal law it is impossible for man to advance.
Curiously enough, the religious doctrine of perfectionism, which often
arises in Methodist circles, and in such holiness movements as have
taken their rise from the influence of Methodism, shows this same root
in the conception of law. Wesley's definition of sin is "the violation
of a known law." If that be all there is of sin, then any of us who is
ordinarily decent and conscientious, may boast of perfection. You can
number perfectionists by tens of thousands on such abstract terms as
these. But if sin be not merely deliberate violation of abstract law; if
it be failure to fulfil to the highest degree the infinitely delicate
personal, domestic, civic, and social relations in which we stand; then
the very notion of perfection is preposterous, and the profession of it
little less than blasphemy. But like the modern religious
perfectionists, the Stoics had little concern for the concrete,
individual, personal ties which bind men and women together in families,
societies, and states. Perfection was an easy thing, because they had
defined it in such abstract terms. Still, though not by any means the
whole of virtue as deeper schools have apprehended it, it is something
to have our inner motive absolutely right, when measured by the standard
of universal law. That at least the Stoic professed to have attained.
Third: The Stoic is a citizen of the whole world. Local, domestic,
national ties bind him not. But this is a cheap way of gaining
universality,--this skipping the particulars of which the universal is
composed. To be as much interested in the politics of Rio Janeiro or
Hong Kong as you are in those of the ward of your own city does not mean
much until we know how much you are interested in the politics of your
own ward. And in the case of the Stoic this interest was very
attenuated. As is usually the case, extension of interest to the ends of
the earth was purchased at the cost of defective intensity close at
home, where charity ought to begin. As a matter of fact the Stoics were
very defective in their standards of citizenship. Still, what the law of
justice demanded, that they were disposed to render to every man; and
thus, though on a very superficial basis, the Stoics laid the broad
foundation of an international democracy which knows no limits of
colour, race, or stage of development. Though Stoicism falls far short
of the warmth and devotion of modern Christian missions, yet the early
stage of the missionary movement, in which people were interested, not
in the concrete welfare of specific peoples, but in vast aggregates of
"souls," represented on maps, and in diagrams, bears a close
resemblance to the Stoic cosmopolitanism. We have all seen people who
would give and work to save the souls of the heathen, who would never
under any circumstances think of calling on the neighbour on the same
street who chanced to be a little below their own social circle. The
soul of a heathen is a very abstract conception; the lowly neighbour a
very concrete affair. The Stoics are not the only people who have
deceived themselves with vast abstractions.
VI
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF STOICISM
The Stoics had a genuine religion. The Epicureans, too, had their gods,
but they never took them very seriously. In a world made up of atoms
accidentally grouped in transient relations, of which countless
accidental groupings I happen to be one, there is no room for a real
religious relationship. Consequently the Epicurean, though he amused
himself with poetic pictures of gods who led lives of undisturbed
serenity, unconcerned about the affairs of men, had no consciousness of
a great spiritual whole of which he was a part, or of an Infinite Person
to whom he was personally related.
To the Stoic, on the contrary, the round world is part of a single
universe, which holds all its parts in the grasp and guidance of one
universal law, determining each particular event. By making that law of
the universe his own, the individual man at once worships the
all-controlling Providence, and achieves his own freedom. For the law to
which he yields is at once the law of the whole universe, and the law of
his own nature as a part of the universe. "We are born subjects,"
exclaims the Stoic, "but to obey God is perfect liberty." "Everything,"
says Marcus Aurelius, "harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O
universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time
for thee."
A characteristic prayer and meditation and hymn will show us, far better
than description, what this Stoic religion meant to those who devoutly
held it. Epictetus gives us this prayer of the dying Cynic: "I stretch
out my hands to God and say: The means which I have received from thee
for seeing thy administration of the world and following it I have not
neglected: I have not dishonoured thee by my acts: see how I have used
my perceptions: have I ever blamed thee? have I been discontented with
anything that happens or wished it to be otherwise? Have I wished to
transgress the relations of things? That thou hast given me life, I
thank thee for what thou hast given: so long as I have used the things
which are thine I am content; take them back and place them wherever
thou mayest choose; for thine were all things,--thou gavest them to me.
Is it not enough to depart in this state of mind, and what life is
better and more becoming than that of a man who is in this state of
mind, and what end is more happy?"
He also offers us this meditation on the inevitable losses of life, by
which he consoles himself with the thought that all he has is a loan
from God, which these seeming losses but restore to their rightful
owner, who had lent them to us for a while.
"Never say about anything, I have lost it; but say, I have restored it.
Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has
been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not this been
also restored? 'But he who has taken it from me is a bad man.' But what
is it to you by whose hands the giver demanded it back? So long as he
may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as
travellers do with their inn."
The grandest expression of the Stoic religion, however, is found in the
hymn of Cleanthes. Elsewhere there is too evident a disposition to
condescend to use God's aid in keeping up the Stoic temper; with little
of outgoing adoration for the greatness and glory which are in God
himself. But in this grand hymn we have genuine reverence, devotion,
worship, praise, self-surrender,--in short, that confession of the glory
of the Infinite by the conscious weakness of the finite in which the
heart of true religion everywhere consists. Nowhere outside of the
Hebrew and Christian Scriptures has adoration breathed itself in more
exalted and fervent strains. The hymn is addressed to Zeus, as the
Stoics freely used the names of the popular gods to express their own
deeper meanings.
HYMN TO ZEUS
"Thee it is lawful for all mortals to address. For we are Thy offspring,
and alone of living creatures possess a voice which is the image of
reason. Therefore I will forever sing Thee and celebrate Thy power. All
this universe rolling round the earth obeys Thee, and follows willingly
at Thy command. Such a minister hast Thou in Thy invincible hands, the
two-edged, flaming, vivid thunderbolt. O King, most High, nothing is
done without Thee, neither in heaven or on earth, nor in the sea, except
what the wicked do in their foolishness. Thou makest order out of
disorder, and what is worthless becomes precious in Thy sight; for Thou
hast fitted together good and evil into one, and hast established one
law that exists forever. But the wicked fly from Thy law, unhappy ones,
and though they desire to possess what is good, yet they see not,
neither do they hear the universal law of God. If they would follow it
with understanding, they might have a good life. But they go astray,
each after his own devices,--some vainly striving after reputation,
others turning aside after gain excessively, others after riotous living
and wantonness. Nay, but, O Zeus, Giver of all things, who dwellest in
dark clouds and rulest over the thunder, deliver men from their
foolishness. Scatter it from their souls, and grant them to obtain
wisdom, for by wisdom Thou dost rightly govern all things; that being
honoured we may repay Thee with honour, singing Thy works without
ceasing, as it is right for us to do. For there is no greater thing than
this, either for mortal men or for the gods, to sing rightly the
universal law."
Modern literature of the nobler sort has many a Stoic note; and we ought
to be able to recognise it in its modern as well as in its ancient
dress. The very best brief expression of the Stoic creed is found in
Henley's Lines to R. T. H. B.:--
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
"Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me unafraid.
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."
The chief modern type of Stoicism, however, is Matthew Arnold. His great
remedy for the ills of which life is so full is stated in the concluding
lines of "The Youth of Man":--
"While the locks are yet brown on thy head,
While the soul still looks through thine eyes,
While the heart still pours
The mantling blood to thy cheek,
Sink, O youth, in thy soul!
Yearn to the greatness of Nature;
Rally the good in the depths of thyself!"
VII
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF STOICISM
If now we know the two fundamental principles of Stoicism, the
indifference of external circumstance as compared with the reaction of
our own thought upon it, and the sanctification of our thought by
self-surrender to the universal law; and if we have learned to recognise
these Stoic notes alike in ancient and modern prose and poetry, we are
ready to discriminate between the good in it which we wish to cherish,
and the shortcomings of the system which it is well for us to avoid.
We can all reduce enormously our troubles and vexations by bringing to
bear upon them the two Stoic formulas. Toward material things, toward
impersonal events at least, we may all with profit put on the Stoic
armour, or to use the figure of the turtle, which is most expressive of
the Stoic attitude, we can all draw the soft sensitive flesh of our
feelings inside the hard shell of resolute thoughts. There is a way of
looking at our poverty, our plainness of feature, our lack of mental
brilliancy, our humble social estate, our unpopularity, our physical
ailments, which, instead of making us miserable, will make us modest,
contented, cheerful, serene. The mistakes that we make, the foolish
words we say, the unfortunate investments into which we get drawn, the
failures we experience, all may be transformed by the Stoic formula into
spurs to greater effort and stimulus to wiser deeds in days to come.
Simply to shift the emphasis from the dead external fact beyond our
control, to the live option which always presents itself within; and to
know that the circumstance that can make us miserable simply does not
exist, unless it exists by our consent within our own minds;--this is a
lesson well worth spending an hour with the Stoics to learn once for
all.
And the other aspect of their doctrine, its quasi-religious side, though
not by any means the last word about religion, is a valuable first
lesson in the reality of religion. To know that the universal law is
everywhere, and that its will may in every circumstance be done; to
measure the petty perturbations of our little lives by the vast orbits
of natural forces moving according to beneficent and unchanging law;
when we come out of the exciting political meeting, or the roar of the
stock-exchange, to look up at the calm stars and the tranquil skies and
hear them say to us, "So hot, my little man";--this elevation of our
individual lives by the reverent contemplation of the universe and its
unswerving laws, is something which we may all learn with profit from
the old Stoic masters. Business, house-keeping, school-teaching,
professional life, politics, society, would all be more noble and
dignified if we could bring to them every now and then a touch of this
Stoic strength and calm.
Criticism, complaint, fault-finding, malicious scandal, unpopularity,
and all the shafts of the censorious are impotent to slay or even wound
the spirit of the Stoic. If these criticisms are true, they are welcomed
as aids in the discovery of faults which are to be frankly faced, and
strenuously overcome. If they are false, unfounded, due to the
querulousness or jealousy of the critic rather than to any fault of the
Stoic, then he feels only contempt for the criticisms and pity for the
poor misguided critic. The true Stoic can be the serene husband of a
scolding shrew of a wife; the complacent representative of dissatisfied
and enraged constituents; maintain unruffled equanimity when cut by his
aristocratic acquaintances and excluded from the most select social
circles: for he carries the only valid standard of social measurement
under his own hat, and needs not the adoration of his wife, the cheers
of his constituents, the cards and invitations, the nods and smiles of
the four hundred to assure him of his dignity and worth. If he is an
author, it does not trouble him that his books are unsold, unread,
uncut. If the many could appreciate him, he would have to be one of
themselves, and then there would be no use in his trying to instruct
them. His book is what the universal law gave him to say, and decreed
that it should be; and whether there be many or few to whom the
universal law has revealed the same truth, and granted power to
appreciate it, is the concern of the universal, not of himself, the
individual author. Again, if he is in poor health, weary, exhausted, if
each stroke of work must be wrought in agony and pain,--that, too, is
decreed for him by those just laws which he or his ancestors have
blindly violated; and he will accept even this dictate of the universal
law as just and good: he will not suffer these trifling incidental pains
and aches to diminish by one jot the output of his hand or brain. When
disillusion and disappointment overtake him; when the things his youth
had sighed for finally take themselves forever out of his reach; when he
sees clearly that only a few more years remain to him, and those must be
composed of the same monotonous round of humdrum details, duties that
have lost the charm of novelty, functions that have long since been
relegated to the unconsciousness of habit, vexations that have been
endured a thousand times, petty pleasures that have long since lost
their zest: even then the Stoic says that this, too, is part of the
universal programme, and must be accepted resignedly. If there is little
that nature has left to give him for which he cares, yet he can return
to her the tribute of an obedient will and a contented mind: if he can
expect little from the world, he can contribute something to it; and so
to the last he maintains,--
"One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
When there is hard work to be done, to which there is no pleasure, no
honour, no emolument attached; when there are evils to be rebuked which
will bring down the wrath and vengeance of the powers that be on him who
exposes the wrong; when there are poor relatives to be supported, and
slights to be endured, and injustice to be borne, it is well for us all
to know this Stoic formula, and fortify our souls behind its
impenetrable walls. To consider not what happens to us, but how we react
upon it; to measure good in terms not of sensuous pleasure, but of
mental attitude; to know that if we are for the universal law, it
matters not how many things may be against us; to rest assured that
there can be no circumstance or condition in which this law cannot be
done by us, and therefore no situation of which we cannot be more than
master, through implicit obedience to the great law that governs
all,--this is the stern consolation of Stoicism; and there are few of us
so happily situated in all respects that there do not come to us times
when such a conviction is a defence and refuge for our souls. Beyond and
above Stoicism we shall try to climb in later chapters. But below
Stoicism one may not suffer his life to fall, if he would escape the
fearful hells of depression, despair, and melancholia. As we lightly
send back across the centuries our thanks to Epicurus for teaching us to
prize at their true worth health and the good things of life, so let us
reverently bow before the Stoic sages, who taught us the secret of that
hardy virtue which bears with fortitude life's inevitable ills.
VIII
THE DEFECTS OF STOICISM
Why we cannot rest in Stoicism as our final guide to life, the mere
statement of their doctrine must have made clear to every one; and in
calling attention to its limitations I shall only be saying for the
reader what he has been saying to himself all through the chapter. It
may be well enough to treat things as indifferent, and work them over
into such mental combinations as best serve our rational interests. To
treat persons in that way, however, to make them mere pawns in the game
which reason plays, is heartless, monstrous. The affections are as
essential to man as his reason. It is a poor substitute for the warm,
sweet, tender ties that bind together husband and wife, parent and
child, friend and friend,--this freezing of people together through
their common relation to the universal law. I suppose that is why, in
all the history of Stoicism, though college girls usually have a period
of flirting with the Stoic melancholy of Matthew Arnold, no woman was
ever known to be a consistent and steadfast Stoic. Indeed a Stoic woman
is a contradiction in terms. One might as well talk of a warm iceberg,
or soft granite, or sweet vinegar. Stoicism is something of which men,
unmarried or badly married men at that, have an absolute monopoly.
Again if its disregard of particulars and individuals is cold and hard,
its attempted substitute of abstract, vague universality is a bit
absurd. Sometimes the lighter mood of caricature best brings out the
weaknesses that are concealed in grave systems when taken too seriously.
Mr. W. S. Gilbert has put the dash of absurdity there is in the Stoic
doctrines so convincingly that his lines may serve the purpose of
illustrating the inherent weakness of the Stoic position better than
more formal criticism. They are addressed
TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE
"Roll on, thou ball, roll on;
Through pathless realms of space
Roll on.
What though I'm in a sorry case?
What though I cannot pay my bills?
What though I suffer toothache's ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
Never you mind!
Roll on.
"Roll on, thou ball, roll on;
Through seas of inky air
Roll on.
It's true I've got no shirts to wear;
It's true my butcher's bills are due;
It's true my prospects all look blue--
But don't let that unsettle you--
Never you mind!
Roll on.
(It rolls on.)"
The incompleteness of the Stoic position is precisely this tendency to
slight and ignore the external conditions out of which life is made.
Its God is fate. Instead of a living, loving will, manifest in the
struggle with present conditions, Stoicism sees only an impersonal law,
rigid, fixed, fatal, unalterable, unimprovable, uncompanionable. Man's
only freedom lies in unconditional surrender to what was long ago
decreed. Of glad and original cooeperation with its beneficent designs,
thus helping to make the world happier and better than it could have
been had not the universal will found and chosen just this individual
me, to work freely for its improvement, Stoicism knows nothing. Its
satisfaction is staked on a dead law to be obeyed, not a live will to be
loved. Its ideal is a monotonous identity of law-abiding agents who
differ from each other chiefly in the names by which they chance to be
designated. It has no place for the development of rich and varied
individuality in each through intense, passionate devotion to other
individuals as widely different as age, sex, training, and temperament
can make them. Before we find the perfect guidance of life we must look
beyond the Stoic as well as the Epicurean, to Plato, to Aristotle, and,
above all, to Jesus.