THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.
Of far more importance in the Stoic system than the study of logic was
the study of nature. This branch of learning, notwithstanding an appeal
to older views, was treated by them with more independence than any
other. The subjects which it included may be divided under four heads,
viz.: 1. Fundamental positions; 2. The course, character, and
government of the universe; 3. Irrational nature; and 4. Man. [253]
The present chapter will be devoted to considering the first of these
groups—the fundamental positions held by the Stoics in regard to
nature; among which three specially deserve notice—their Materialism;
their Dynamical view of the world; and their Pantheism.
[A. Materialism.]
[(1) Meaning of the Stoic materialism.]
[(a) Material or corporeal objects.]
[(α) Reality belongs to material objects only.]
Nothing appears more striking to a reader fresh from the study of Plato
or Aristotle than the startling contrast to those writers presented by
the Materialism of the Stoics. Whilst so far following Plato as to
define a real thing [254] to be anything possessing the capacity of
acting or being acted upon, the Stoics nevertheless restricted the
possession of this power to material objects. Hence followed their
conclusion that nothing real exists except what is material; or, if
they could not deny existence in some sense or other to what is
incorporeal, they were fain to assert that essential and real Being
only belongs to what is material, whereas of what is incorporeal only a
certain modified kind of Being can be predicated. [255] Following out
this view, it was natural that they should regard many things as
corporeal which are not generally considered such; for instance, the
soul and virtue. Nevertheless, it would not be correct to say [256]
that the Stoics gave to the conception of matter or corporeity a more
extended meaning than it usually bears. For they define a body to be
that which has three dimensions, [257] and they also lay themselves out
to prove how things generally considered to be incorporeal may be
material in the strictest sense of the term. Thus besides upholding the
corporeal character of all substances, including the human soul and
God, [258] they likewise assert that properties or forms are material:
all attributes by means of which one object is distinguished from
another are produced by the existence [(β) Theory of air-currents.] of
certain air-currents, [259] which, emanating from the centre of an
object, diffuse themselves to its extremities, and having reached the
surface, return again to the centre to constitute the inward unity.
[260] Nor was the theory of air-currents confined to bodily attributes.
It was applied quite as much to mental attributes. Virtues and vices
are said to be material, [261] and are deduced from the tension
imparted to the soul by atmospheric substances therein subsisting.
[262] For the same reason the Good is called a body, for according to
the Stoics the Good is only a virtue, and virtue is a definite
condition of that material which constitutes the soul. [263] In the
same sense also truth is said to be material, personal and not
independent, truth being of course meant, [264] that is to say,
knowledge, or a property of the soul that knows. And since according to
the Stoics knowledge consists in the presence of certain material
elements within the soul, truth in the sense of knowledge may be
rightly called something material. Even emotions, impulses, notions and
judgments, in so far as they are due to material causes—the
air-currents pouring into the soul (πνεύματα)—were regarded as material
objects, and for the same reason not only artistic skill but individual
actions were said to be corporeal. [265] Yet [(γ) The causes of
actions material.] certain actions, such as walking and dancing, can
hardly have been called bodies by the Stoics, any more than being wise
was called a body; [266] but the objects which produced these actions,
as indeed everything which makes itself felt, were considered to be
corporeal. To us it appears most natural to refer these actions to the
soul as their originating cause; but the Stoics, holding the theory of
subject-matter and property, preferred to refer each such action to
some special material as its cause, considering that an action is due
to the presence of this material. The idealism of Plato was thus
reproduced in a new form by the materialism of the Stoics. Plato had
said, a man is just and musical when he participates in the idea of
justice and music; the Stoics said, a man is virtuous when the material
producing virtue is in him; musical, when he has the material producing
music.
[(δ) Wide extension of material.]
Moreover, these materials produce the phenomena of life. Hence, not
content with calling them bodies, the Stoics actually went so far as to
call them living beings. It seems, however, strange to hear such things
as day and night, and parts of the day and parts of the night, months
and years, even days of the month and seasons of the year, called
bodies; [267] but by these singularly unhappy expressions Chrysippus
appears to have meant little more than that the realities corresponding
to these names depend on certain material conditions: by summer is
meant a certain state of the air when highly heated by the sun; by
month the moon for a certain definite period during which it gives
light to the earth. [268] From all these examples one thing is clear,
how impossible the Stoics found it to assign reality to what is not
material.
[(b) The incorporeal or non-material.]
In carrying out this theory, they could not, as might be expected,
wholly succeed. Hence a Stoic could not deny that there are certain
things which it is absurd to call material. Among such include empty
space, place, time, and expression (λεκτόν). [269] Admitting these to
be incorporeal, they still would not allow that they do not exist at
all. This view belongs only to isolated members of the Stoic School,
for which they must be held personally responsible. [270] How they
could harmonise belief in incorporeal things with their tenet that
existence alone belongs to what is material is not on record.
[(2) Causes which produced the Stoic materialism.]
The question next before us is: What led the Stoics to this
materialism? It might be supposed that their peculiar theory of
knowledge based on sensation was the cause; but this theory did not
preclude the possibility of advancing from the sensible to the
super-sensible. It might quite as well be said that their theory of
knowledge was a consequence of their materialism, and that they
referred all knowledge to sensation, because they could allow no real
being to anything which is not material. The probability therefore
remains that their theory of knowledge and their materialistic view of
nature both indicate one and the same habit of mind, and that both are
due to the action of the same causes.
[(a) The Stoic materialism not an expansion of Peripatetic views.]
Nor will it do to seek for these causes in the influence exercised by
the Peripatetic or pre-Socratic philosophy on the Stoic School. At
first sight, indeed, it might appear that the Stoics had borrowed from
Heraclitus their materialism, together with their other views on
nature; or else their materialism might seem to be an expansion of the
metaphysical notions of Plato and Aristotle. For if Aristotle denied
Plato’s distinction of form and matter to such an extent that he would
hardly allow form to exist at all except in union with matter, might it
not appear to others more logical to do away with the distinction
between them in thought, thus reducing both to a property of matter?
Were there not difficulties in the doctrine of a God external to the
world, of a passionless Reason? Were there not even difficulties in the
antithesis of form and matter, which Aristotle’s system was powerless
to overcome? And had not Aristoxenus and Dicæarchus before the time of
Zeno, and Strato immediately after his time, been led from the ground
occupied by the Peripatetics to materialistic views? And yet we must
pause before accepting this explanation. The founder of Stoicism
appears, from what is recorded of his intellectual growth, to have been
repelled by the Peripatetic School more than by any other; nor is there
the least indication in the records of the Stoic teaching that that
teaching resulted from a criticism of the Aristotelian and Platonic
views of a double origin of things. Far from it, the proposition that
everything capable of acting or being acted upon must be material,
appears with the Stoics as an independent axiom needing no further
proof.
[(b) The Stoic materialism not due to Heraclitus.]
The supposed connection between the Stoics and Heraclitus, so far from
explaining their materialistic views, already presumes their existence.
Yet long before Zeno’s time the philosophy of Heraclitus as a living
tradition had become extinct. No historical connection therefore, or
relation of original dependence, can possibly exist between the two,
but at most a subsequent perception of relationship can have directed
Zeno to Heraclitus. Zeno’s own view of the world was not a consequence,
but the cause, of his sympathy with Heraclitus. In short, neither the
Peripatetics nor Heraclitus can have given the first impulse to Zeno’s
materialism, although they may have helped in many ways to strengthen
his views on that subject, when already formed.
[(c) Practical turn of the Stoic philosophy the cause.]
The real causes for these views must therefore be sought elsewhere, and
will be found in the central idea of the whole system of the Stoics—the
practical character of their philosophy. Devoting themselves from the
outset with all their energies to practical enquiries, the Stoics in
their theory of nature occupied the ground of common views, which know
of no real object excepting what is grossly sensible and corporeal.
Their aim in speculation was to discover a firm basis for human
actions. [271] In action, however, men are brought into direct and
experimental contact with objects. The objects thus presented to the
senses we are brought face to face with in naked reality, nor is an
opportunity afforded for doubting their real being. Their reality is
proved practically, inasmuch as it affects us and offers itself for the
exercise of our powers. In every such exercise of power, both subject
and object are always material. Even when an impression is conveyed to
the soul of man, the direct instrument is something material—the voice
or the gesture. In the region of experience there are no such things as
non-material impressions. This was the ground occupied by the Stoics: a
real thing is what either acts on us, or is acted upon by us. Such a
thing is naturally material; and the Stoics with their practical ideas
not being able to soar above that which is most obvious, declared that
reality belongs only to the world of bodies.
[(3) Consequences of the Stoic materialism.]
Herefrom it would appear to follow that only individual perceptions are
true, and that all general conceptions without exception must be false.
If each notion (λεκτὸν) is incorporeal, and consequently unreal, [272]
will not absence of reality in a much higher degree belong to the
notion of what is general? [(a) Individual perceptions alone true; yet
a higher truth assigned to general conceptions.] Individual notions
refer directly to perceptions, i.e. to things incorporeal; nevertheless
they indirectly refer to the things perceived, i.e. to what is
material. But general notions do not even indirectly refer to anything
corporeal; they are pure fabrications of the mind, which have nothing
real as their object. This the Stoics explicitly maintained. [273] It
was therefore a gross inconsistency to attribute notwithstanding to
these general conceptions, to which no real objects correspond, a
higher truth and certainty than belongs to the perceptions of
individual objects, but an inconsistency which the Stoic system made
not the slightest attempt to overcome.
[(b) Theory of universal intermingling.]
The materialism of the Stoics likewise led to some remarkable
assertions in the province of natural science. If the attributes of
things, the soul and even the powers of the soul, are all corporeal,
the relation of attributes to their objects, of the soul to the body,
of one body to another body, is that of mutual intermingling. [274]
Moreover, inasmuch as the essential attributes of any definite material
belong to every part of that material, and the soul resides in every
part of the body, without the soul’s being identical with the body, and
without the attributes being identical with the material to which they
belong, or with one another; it follows that one body may intermingle
with another not only by occupying the vacant spaces in that body, but
by interpenetrating all its parts, without, however, being fused into a
homogeneous mass with it. [275] This view involves not only a denial of
the impenetrability of matter, but it further supposes that a smaller
body when mingled with a greater body will extend over the whole of the
latter. It is known as the Stoic theory of universal intermingling
(κρᾶσις δι’ ὅλων), and is alike different from the ordinary view of
mechanical mixture and from that of chemical mixture. It differs from
the former in that every part of the one body is interpenetrated by
every part of the other; from the latter, because the bodies after
mixture still retain their own properties. [276] This peculiar theory,
which is one of the much debated but distinctive features of the Stoic
system, [277] cannot have been deduced from physical causes. On the
contrary, the arguments by which Chrysippus supported it prove that it
was ultimately the result of metaphysical considerations. [278] We
have, moreover, no reason to doubt it as a fact, inasmuch as the
materialistic undercurrent of the Stoic system affords the best
explanation of it.
[B. Dynamical theory of nature.]
[(1) Matter and force.]
Although the stamp of materialism was sharply cut, and its application
fearlessly made by the Stoics, they were yet far from holding the
mechanical theory of nature, which appears to us to be a necessary
consequence of strict materialism. The universe was explained on a
dynamical theory; the notion of force was placed above the notion of
matter. To matter, they held, alone belongs real existence; but the
characteristic of real existence they sought in causation, in the
capacity to act and to be acted upon. [279] This capacity belongs to
matter only by virtue of certain inherent forces, which impart to it
definite attributes. Let pure matter devoid of every attribute be
considered, the matter which underlies all definite materials, and out
of which all things are made; [280] it will be found to be purely
passive, a something subject to any change, able to assume any shape
and quality, but taken by itself devoid of quality and unable to
produce any change whatsoever. [281] This inert and powerless matter is
first reduced into shape by means of attributes, [282] all of which
suppose tension in the air-currents which produce them, and
consequently suppose a force producing tension. [283] Even the shape of
bodies, and the place they occupy in space, is, according to the
Stoics, something derivative, the consequence of tension; tension
keeping the different particles apart in one or the other particular
way. [284] Just as some modern physiologists construct nature by
putting together a sum of forces of attraction and repulsion, so the
Stoics refer nature to two forces, or, speaking more accurately, to a
double kind of motion—expansion and condensation. Expansion works
outwardly, condensation inwardly; condensation produces being, or what
is synonymous with it, matter; expansion gives rise to the attributes
of things. [285] Whilst, therefore, they assert that everything really
existing must be material, they still distinguish in what is material
two component parts—the part which is acted upon, and the part which
acts, or in other words matter and force. [286]
[(2) The nature of force.]
[(a) Force limited to the notion of efficient cause.]
The Stoics, however, would not agree with Plato and Aristotle so far as
to allow to formal and final causes a place side by side with this
acting force or efficient cause. If in general anything may be called a
cause which serves to bring about a definite result [287]—and various
kinds of causes may be distinguished, according as they bring about
this result directly or indirectly, by themselves alone or by the help
of others [288]—in the highest sense there can be, according to the
Stoics, only one acting or efficient cause. The form is due to the
workman, and is therefore only a part of the efficient cause. The
type-form is only an instrument, which the workman employs in his work.
The final cause or end-in-chief, in as far as it represents the
workman’s intention, is only an occasional cause; in as far as it
belongs to the work he is about, it is not a cause at all, but a
result. There can be but one pure and unconditional cause, just as
there can be but one matter; and to this efficient cause everything
that exists and everything that takes place must be referred. [289]
[(b) Character of this efficient cause.]
In attempting to form a more accurate notion of this efficient cause,
the first point which deserves attention is, that the Stoics believed
every kind of action ultimately to proceed from one source. For how
could the world be such a self-circumscribed unity, such an harmonious
whole, unless it were governed by one and the same force? [290] Again,
as everything which acts is material, the highest efficient cause must
likewise be considered material; and since all qualities and forces are
produced by vapour-like or fiery elements, can it be otherwise with the
highest acting force? [291] Everywhere warmth is the cause of
nourishment and growth, life and motion; all things have in themselves
their own natural heat, and are preserved and kept in life by the heat
of the sun. What applies to parts of the world must apply to the world
as a whole; hence heat or fire is the power to which the life and the
existence of the world must be referred. [292]
This power must be further defined to be the soul of the world, the
highest reason, a kind, beneficent, and philanthropic being; in short,
deity. The universal belief and the universal worship of God prove
this, as the Stoics think, beyond a doubt; [293] still more accurate
investigation confirms it. Matter can never move or fashion itself;
nothing but a power inherent as the soul is in man can produce these
results. [294] The world would not be the most perfect and complete
thing it is unless Reason were inherent therein; [295] nor could it
contain any beings possessed of consciousness, unless it were conscious
itself. [296] It could not produce creatures endowed with a soul and
reason, unless it were itself endowed with a soul and reason. [297]
Actions so far surpassing man’s power could not exist, unless there
were a cause for them in perfection equally surpassing man. [298] The
subordination of means to ends which governs the world in every part
down to the minutest details would be inexplicable, unless the world
owed its origin to a reasonable creator. [299] The graduated rank of
beings would be incomplete, unless there were a highest Being of all
whose moral and intellectual perfection cannot be surpassed. [300]
Although this perfection belongs, in the first place, to the world as a
whole, [301] nevertheless, as in everything consisting of many parts,
so in the world the ruling part must be distinguished from other parts.
It is the part from which all acting forces emanate and diffuse
themselves over the world, [302] whether the seat of this efficient
force be placed in the heaven, as was done by Zeno, Chrysippus, and the
majority of the Stoics; [303] or in the sun, as by Cleanthes; [304] or
in the centre of the world, as by Archedemus. [305] This primary source
of all life and motion, the highest Cause and the highest Reason, is
God. God, therefore, and formless matter, are the two ultimate grounds
of things. [306]
[(3) Deity.]
[(a) The conception of Deity more accurately defined.]
The language used by the Stoics in reference to the Deity at one time
gives greater prominence to the material, at another to the spiritual
side of their conception of God. As a rule, both are united in
expressions which only cease to be startling when taken in connection
with Stoic views in general. God is spoken of as being Fire, Ether,
Air, most commonly as being πνεῦμα or Atmospheric-Current, pervading
everything without exception, what is most base and ugly, as well as
what is most beautiful. [307] He is further described [308] as the
Soul, the Mind, or the Reason of the world; as a united Whole,
containing in Himself the germs of all things; as the Connecting
element in all things; as Universal Law, Nature, Destiny, Providence;
as a perfect, happy, ever kind and all-knowing Being; nor was it hard
to show that no conception could be formed of God without these
attributes. [309] Both kinds of expression are combined in the
assertion that God is the fiery Reason of the World, the Mind in
Matter, the reasonable Air-Current, penetrating all things, and
assuming various names according to the material in which He resides,
the artistically moulding Fire, containing in Himself the germs of
everything, and producing according to an unalterable law the world and
all that is therein. [310]
As used in the Stoic system, these expressions generally mean one and
the same thing. It is an unimportant difference whether the original
cause is described as an Air-Current or as Ether, or as Heat or as
Fire. It is an Air-Current, for Air-Currents are, as we have already
seen, the causes of the properties of things, giving them shape and
connection. It is also Fire, for by fire is only meant the warm air, or
the fiery fluid, which is sometimes called Ether, at other times Fire,
at other times Heat, [311] and which is expressly distinguished from
ordinary fire. [312] Moreover the terms, Soul of the world, Reason of
the world, Nature, Universal Law, Providence, Destiny—all mean the same
thing, the one primary force penetrating the whole world. Even the more
abstract expressions, Law, Providence, Destiny, have with the Stoics an
essentially gross meaning, implying not only the form according to
which the world is arranged and governed, but also the essential
substance of the world, as a power above everything particular and
individual. [313] If Nature must be distinguished from Destiny, and
both of these notions again from Zeus, [314] the distinction can only
consist herein, that the three conceptions describe one original Being
at different stages of His manifestation and growth. Viewed as the
whole of the world it is called Zeus; viewed as the inner power in the
world, Providence or Destiny; [315] and to prove this identity at the
close of every period, so taught Chrysippus, Zeus goes back into
Providence. [316]
Upon closer examination, even the difference between the materialistic
and idealistic description of God vanishes. God, according to Stoic
principles, can only be invested with reality when He has a material
form. Hence, when He is called the Soul, the Mind, or the Reason of the
world, this language does not exclude, but rather presupposes, that
these conceptions have bodies; and such bodies the Stoics thought to
discern in that heated fluid which they at one time call the
all-penetrating Breath, at another Ether, or primary Fire. [317] Each
of these two determinations appeared to them indispensable, [318] and
both became identical by assuming, as the Stoics did, that the infinite
character of the divine Reason depends on the purity and lightness of
the fiery material which composes it. [319] Seneca is therefore only
following out the principles of his School when he pronounces it
indifferent whether God is regarded as Destiny or as an all-pervading
Breath. [320] Those who charge the Stoics with inconsistency for
calling God at one time Reason, at another Soul of the universe, at
another Destiny, at another Fire, Ether, or even the Universe, [321]
forget that they are attaching to these terms a meaning entirely
different from that in which they were used by them. [322]
[(b) God original matter.]
The more the two sides of the conception of God—the material and the
ideal—are compared, the clearer it becomes that there is no difference
between God and primary Matter. Both are one and the same substance,
which, when regarded as the universal substratum, is known as
undetermined matter; but when conceived of as acting force, is called
all-pervading Ether, all-warming Fire, all-penetrating Air, Nature,
Soul of the world, Reason of the world, Providence, Destiny, God.
Matter and power, material and form, are not, as with Aristotle, things
radically different, though united from all eternity. Far from it, the
forming force resides in matter as such; it is in itself something
material; it is identical with Ether, or Fire-element, or Breath. Hence
the difference between efficient and material cause, between God and
matter, resolves itself into the difference between Breath and other
elements. This difference, too, is no original or ultimate difference.
According to the Stoic teaching, every particular element has in
process of time developed out of primary fire or God, and to God it
will return at the end of every period of the world. [323] It is
therefore only a derivative and passing difference with which we are
here concerned. But taking the conception of Deity in its full meaning,
it may be described as primary matter, as well as primary power. The
sum total of all that is real is the divine Breath, moving forth from
itself and returning to itself again. [324] Deity itself is primary
fire, containing in itself in germ both God and matter; [325] the world
in its original gaseous condition; [326] the Universal Substance
changing into particular elements, and from them returning to itself
again, which regarded in its real form as God includes at one time
everything, at another only a part of real existence. [327]
[C. Pantheism.]
[(1) God identical with the world.]
From what has been said it follows that the Stoics admitted no
essential difference between God and the world. Their system was
therefore strictly pantheistic. The world is the sum of all real
existence, and all real existence is originally contained in deity,
which is at once the matter of everything and the creative force which
moulds this matter into particular individual substances. We can,
therefore, think of nothing which is not either immediately deity or a
manifestation of deity. In point of essence, therefore, God and the
world are the same; indeed, the two conceptions are declared by the
Stoics to be absolutely identical. [328] If they have nevertheless to
be distinguished, the distinction is only derivative and partial. The
same universal Being is called God when it is regarded as a whole,
World when it is regarded as progressive in one of the many forms
assumed in the course of its development. The difference, therefore, is
tantamount to assigning a difference of meaning to the term world,
according as it is used to express the whole of what exists, or only
the derivative part. [329]
[(2) Difference between God and the world only relative.]
Still this distinction does not depend only upon our way of looking at
things, but it is founded in the nature of things. Primary force, as
such, primary fire, primary reason, constitute what is primarily God.
Things into which this primary substance has changed itself are only
divine in a derivative sense. Hence deity, which is ultimately
identical with the whole of the world, may again be described as a part
of the world, as the leading part (τὸ ἡγεμονικόν), as the Soul of the
world, as the all-pervading fiery Breath. [330] The distinction,
however, is only a relative one. What is not immediately divine is
nevertheless divine derivatively, as being a manifestation of primary
fire; and if the soul of the world is not identical with the body, at
least it pervades every part of that body. [331] It is a distinction,
too, which applies only to a part of the conditions of the world. At
the end of every period, the sum of all derivative things reverts to
the unity of the divine Being, and the distinction between what is
originally and what is derivatively divine, in other words, the
distinction between God and the world, ceases.
[(3) Boëthus dissents from the pantheism of the Stoics.]
Boëthus alone dissented from the pantheism of the Stoics by making a
real distinction between God and the world. Agreeing with the other
Stoics in considering deity to be an ethereal Substance, [332] he would
not allow that it resided, as the Soul, within the whole world, and,
consequently, he refused to call the world a living being. [333]
Instead of doing so, he placed the seat of deity in the highest of the
heavenly spheres, the sphere of the fixed stars, and made it operate
upon the world from this abode. [334] The opposite view detracted, in
his eyes, from the unchangeable and exalted character of the divine
Being. How anxious he was to vindicate that character will also be seen
in the way in which he differed from his fellow-Stoics in reference to
the destruction of the world.