main heads. Before a battle if both parties were asked what aim they
were pursuing, both would say without hesitation 'Victory'. After the
battle, the conqueror would probably say that his purpose was in some
way to consolidate or extend his victory; but the beaten party, as soon
as he had time to think, would perhaps explain that, after all, victory
was not everything. It was better to have fought for the right, to have
done your best and to have failed, than to revel in the prosperity of
the unjust. And, since it is difficult to maintain, in the midst of the
triumph of the enemy and your own obvious misery and humiliation, that
all is well and you yourself thoroughly contented, this second answer
easily develops a third: 'Wait a little, till God's judgement asserts
itself; and see who has the best of it then!' There will be a rich
reward hereafter for the suffering virtuous.
The typical Athenian of the Periclean age would have been in the first
state of mind. His 'good' would be in the nature of success: to spread
Justice and Freedom, to make Athens happy and strong and her laws wise
and equal for rich and poor. Antisthenes had fallen violently into the
second. He was defeated together with all that he most cared for, and he
comforted himself with the thought that nothing matters except to have
done your best. As he phrased it _Aretê is the good_, Aretê meaning
'virtue' or 'goodness', the quality of a good citizen, a good father, a
good dog, a good sword.
The things of the world are vanity, and philosophy as vain as the rest.
Nothing but goodness is good; and the first step towards attaining it is
to repent.
There was in Athens a gymnasium built for those who were base-born and
could not attend the gymnasia of true citizens. It was called Kynosarges
and was dedicated to the great bastard, Heracles. Antisthenes, though he
had moved hitherto in the somewhat patrician circle of the Socratics,
remembered how that his mother was a Thracian slave, and set up his
school in Kynosarges among the disinherited of the earth. He made
friends with the 'bad,' who needed befriending. He dressed like the
poorest workman. He would accept no disciples except those who could
bear hardship, and was apt to drive new-comers away with his stick. Yet
he also preached in the streets, both in Athens and Corinth. He preached
rhetorically, with parables and vivid emotional phrases, compelling the
attention of the crowd. His eloquence was held to be bad style, and it
started the form of literature known to the Cynics as χρεία, 'a help',
or διατριβή, 'a study', and by the Christians as ὁμιλία, a 'homily' or
sermon.
This passionate and ascetic old man would have attracted the interest of
the world even more, had it not been for one of his disciples. This was
a young man from Sinope, on the Euxine, whom he did not take to at first
sight; the son of a disreputable money-changer who had been sent to
prison for defacing the coinage. Antisthenes ordered the lad away, but
he paid no attention; he beat him with his stick, but he never moved. He
wanted 'wisdom', and saw that Antisthenes had it to give. His aim in
life was to do as his father had done, to 'deface the coinage', but on a
much larger scale. He would deface all the coinage current in the world.
Every conventional stamp was false. The men stamped as generals and
kings; the things stamped as honour and wisdom and happiness and riches;
all were base metal with lying superscriptions. All must have the stamp
defaced.[90:1]
This young man was Diogenes, afterwards the most famous of all the
Cynics. He started by rejecting all stamps and superscriptions and
holding that nothing but _Aretê_, 'worth' or 'goodness', was good. He
rejected tradition. He rejected the current religion and the rules and
customs of temple worship. True religion was a thing of the spirit, and
needed no forms. He despised divination. He rejected civil life and
marriage. He mocked at the general interest in the public games and the
respect paid to birth, wealth, or reputation. Let man put aside these
delusions and know himself. And for his defences let him arm himself
'against Fortune with courage, against Convention with Nature, against
passion with Reason'. For Reason is 'the god within us'.
The salvation for man was to return to Nature, and Diogenes interpreted
this return in the simplest and crudest way. He should live like the
beasts, like primeval men, like barbarians. Were not the beasts blessed,
ῥεῖα ζώοντες like the Gods in Homer? And so, though in less perfection,
were primitive men, not vexing their hearts with imaginary sins and
conventions. Travellers told of savages who married their sisters, or
ate human flesh, or left their dead unburied. Why should they not, if
they wished to? No wonder Zeus punished Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, who
had brought all this progress upon us and left man civilized and more
unhappy than any beast! He deserved his crag and his vulture!
Diogenes took his mission with great earnestness. He was leader in a
'great battle against Pleasures and Desires'. He was 'the servant, the
message-bearer, sent by Zeus', 'the Setter-Free of mankind' and the
'Healer of passions'.
The life that he personally meant to live, and which he recommended to
the wise, was what he called τὸν κυνικὸν βίον, 'a dog's life', and he
himself wished to be a 'cynic' or 'canine'. A dog was brave and
faithful; it had no bodily shame, no false theories, and few wants. A
dog needed no clothes, no house, no city, no possessions, no titles;
what he did need was 'virtue', Aretê, to catch his prey, to fight wild
beasts, and to defend his master; and that he could provide for himself.
Diogenes found, of course, that he needed a little more than an ordinary
dog; a blanket, a wallet or bowl to hold his food, and a staff a 'to
beat off dogs and bad men'. It was the regular uniform of a beggar. He
asked for no house. There was a huge earthen pitcher--not a tub--outside
the Temple of the Great Mother; the sort of vessel that was used for
burial in primitive Greece and which still had about it the associations
of a coffin. Diogenes slept there when he wanted shelter, and it became
the nearest approach to a home that he had. Like a dog he performed any
bodily act without shame, when and where he chose. He obeyed no human
laws because he recognized no city. He was _Cosmopolîtes_, Citizen of
the Universe; all men, and all beasts too, were his brothers. He lived
preaching in the streets and begging his bread; except that he did not
'beg', he 'commanded'. Other folk obeyed his commands because they were
still slaves, while he 'had never been a slave again since Antisthenes
set him free'. He had no fear, because there was nothing to take from
him. Only slaves are afraid.
Greece rang with stories of his mordant wit, and every bitter saying
became fathered on Diogenes. Every one knew how Alexander the Great had
come to see the famous beggar and, standing before him where he sat in
the open air, had asked if there was any boon he could confer on him.
'Yes, move from between me and the sun.' They knew the king's saying,
'If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes', and the polite answer 'If
I were not Diogenes I would be Alexander'. The Master of the World and
the Rejector of the World met on an equality. People told too how the
Cynic walked about with a lamp in the daytime searching, so he said,
'for a man'. They knew his scorn of the Mysteries with their doctrine of
exclusive salvation; was a thief to be in bliss because he was
initiated, while Agesilaus and Epaminondas were in outer darkness? A few
of the stories are more whimsical. A workman carrying a pole
accidentally hit Diogenes and cried 'Look out!' 'Why,' said he, 'are you
going to hit me again?'
He had rejected patriotism as he rejected culture. Yet he suffered as he
saw Greece under the Macedonians and Greek liberties disappearing. When
his death was approaching some disciple asked his wishes about his
burial; 'Let the dogs and wolves have me,' he said; 'I should like to be
of some use to my brothers when I die.' When this request was refused
his thoughts turned again to the Macedonian Wars; 'Bury me face
downwards; everything is soon going to be turned the other way up.'
He remains the permanent and unsurpassed type of one way of grappling
with the horror of life. Fear nothing, desire nothing, possess nothing:
and then Life with all its ingenuity of malice cannot disappoint you. If
man cannot enter into life nor yet depart from it save through agony and
filth, let him learn to endure the one and be indifferent to the other.
The watchdog of Zeus on earth has to fulfil his special duty, to warn
mankind of the truth and to set slaves free. Nothing else matters.
The criticism of this solution is not that it is selfish. It is not. The
Cynic lives for the salvation of his fellow creatures. And it is worth
remembering that before the Roman gladiatorial games were eventually
stopped by the self-immolation of the monk Telemachus, two Cynic
philosophers had thrown themselves into the arena in the same spirit.
Its weakness lies in a false psychology, common to all the world at that
time, which imagined that salvation or freedom consists in living
utterly without desire or fear, that such a life is biologically
possible, and that Diogenes lived it. To a subtler critic it is obvious
that Diogenes was a man of very strong and successful ambitions, though
his ambitions were different from those of most men. He solved the
problem of his own life by following with all the force and courage of
his genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the most
famous man in Greece. To be really without fear or desire would mean
death, and to die is not to solve the riddle of living.
The difference between the Cynic view of life and that of Plato's
_Republic_ is interesting. Plato also rejected the most fundamental
conventions of existing society, the accepted methods of government, the
laws of property and of marriage, the traditional religion and even the
poetry which was a second religion to the Greeks. But he rejected the
existing culture only because he wanted it to be better. He condemned
the concrete existing city in order to build a more perfect city, to
proceed in infinite searching and longing towards the Idea of Good, the
Sun of the spiritual universe. Diogenes rejected the civilization which
he saw, and admitted the reality of no other. His crude realistic
attitude of mind had no use for Plato's 'Ideas'. 'I can see a table,' he
said; 'I cannot see Tabularity' (τραπεζότης). 'I know Athens and Corinth
and other cities, and can see that they are all bad. As for the Ideal
Society, show it me and I will say what I think.'
In spite of its false psychology the Cynic conception of life had a
great effect in Greece. It came almost as a revelation to both men and
women[95:1] and profoundly influenced all the Schools. Here indeed, it
seemed, was a way to baffle Fortune and to make one's own soul unafraid.
What men wanted was τὸ θαρρεῖν 'to be of good cheer'; as we say now, to
regain their _morale_ after bewildering defeats. The Cynic answer,
afterwards corrected and humanized by the Stoics, was to look at life as
a long and arduous campaign. The loyal soldier does not trouble about
his comfort or his rewards or his pleasures. He obeys his commander's
orders without fear or failing, whether they lead to easy victories or
merely to wounds, captivity or death. Only Goodness is good, and for the
soldier Goodness (ἀρετή) is the doing of Duty. That is his true prize,
which no external power can take away from him.
But after all, what is Duty? Diogenes preached 'virtue' and assumed that
his way of life was 'virtue'. But was it really so? And, if so, on what
evidence? To live like a beast, to be indifferent to art, beauty,
letters, science, philosophy, to the amenities of civic life, to all
that raised Hellenic Man above the beast or the savage? How could this
be the true end of man? The Stoic School, whose founder, Zeno, was a
disciple of old Antisthenes, gradually built up a theory of moral life
which has on the whole weathered the storms of time with great success.
It largely dominated later antiquity by its imaginative and emotional
power. It gave form to the aspirations of early Christianity. It lasts
now as the nearest approach to an acceptable system of conduct for those
who do not accept revelation, but still keep some faith in the Purpose
of Things.
The problem is to combine the absolute value of that Goodness which, as
we say, 'saves the soul' with the relative values of the various good
things that soothe or beautify life. For, if there is any value at
all--I will not say in health and happiness, but in art, poetry,
knowledge, refinement, public esteem, or human affection, and if their
claims do clash, as in common opinion they sometimes do, with the
demands of absolute sanctity, how is the balance to be struck? Are we to
be content with the principle of accepting a little moral wrong for the
sake of much material or artistic or intellectual advantage? That is the
rule which the practical world follows, though without talking about
it; but the Stoics would have none of any such compromise.
Zeno first, like Antisthenes, denied any value whatever to these earthly
things that are not virtue--to health or sickness, riches or poverty,
beauty or ugliness, pain or pleasure; who would ever mention them when
the soul stood naked before God? All that would then matter, and
consequently all that can ever matter, is the goodness of the man's
self, that is, of his free and living will. The Stoics improved on the
military metaphor; for to the soldier, after all, it does matter whether
in his part of the field he wins or loses. Life is not like a battle but
like a play, in which God has handed each man his part unread, and the
good man proceeds to act it to the best of his power, not knowing what
may happen in the last scene. He may become a crowned king, he may be a
slave dying in torment. What matters it? The good actor can play either
part. All that matters is that he shall act his best, accept the order
of the Cosmos and obey the Purpose of the great Dramaturge.
The answer seems absolute and unyielding, with no concession to the
weakness of the flesh. Yet, in truth, it contains in itself the germ of
a sublime practical compromise which makes Stoicism human. It accepts
the Cosmos and it obeys the Purpose; therefore there is a Cosmos, and
there is a purpose in the world. Stoicism, like much of ancient thought
at this period, was permeated by the new discoveries of astronomy and
their formation into a coherent scientific system, which remained
unshaken till the days of Copernicus. The stars, which had always moved
men's wonder and even worship, were now seen and proved to be no
wandering fires but parts of an immense and apparently eternal order.
One star might differ from another star in glory, but they were all
alike in their obedience to law. They had their fixed courses, divine
though they were, which had been laid down for them by a Being greater
than they. The Order, or Cosmos, was a proven fact; therefore, the
Purpose was a proven fact; and, though in its completeness inscrutable,
it could at least in part be divined from the fact that all these varied
and eternal splendours had for their centre our Earth and its ephemeral
master. The Purpose, though it is not our Purpose, is especially
concerned with us and circles round us. It is the purpose of a God who
loves Man.
Let us forget that this system of astronomy has been overthrown, and
that we now know that Man is not the centre of the universe. Let us
forget that the majestic order which reigns, or seems to reign, among
the stars, is matched by a brutal conflict and a chaos of jarring
purposes in the realms of those sciences which deal with life.[98:1] If
we can recover the imaginative outlook of the generations which
stretched from, say, Meton in the fifth century before Christ to
Copernicus in the sixteenth after, we shall be able to understand the
spiritual exaltation with which men like Zeno or Poseidonius regarded
the world.
We are part of an Order, a Cosmos, which we see to be infinitely above
our comprehension but which we know to be an expression of love for Man;
what can we do but accept it, not with resignation but with enthusiasm,
and offer to it with pride any sacrifice which it may demand of us. It
is a glory to suffer for such an end.
And there is more. For the Stars show only what may be called a
stationary purpose, an Order which is and remains for ever. But in the
rest of the world, we can see a moving Purpose. It is Phusis, the word
which the Romans unfortunately translated 'Natura', but which means
'Growing' or 'the way things grow'--almost what we call Evolution. But
to the Stoic it is a living and conscious evolution, a forethought
or Πρόνοια in the mind of God, what the Romans called _providentia_,
guiding all things that grow in a direction which accords with the
divine will. And the direction, the Stoic pointed out, was not towards
mere happiness but towards _Aretê_, or the perfection of each thing or
each species after its kind. _Phusis_ shapes the acorn to grow into the
perfect oak, the blind puppy into the good hound; it makes the deer grow
in swiftness to perform the function of a deer, and man grow in power
and wisdom to perform the function of a man. If a man is an artist it is
his function to produce beauty; if he a governor, it is his function to
produce a flourishing and virtuous city. True, the things that he
produces are but shadows and in themselves utterly valueless; it matters
not one straw whether the deer goes at ten miles an hour or twenty,
whether the population of a city die this year of famine and sickness or
twenty years hence of old age. But it belongs to the good governor to
avert famine and to produce healthy conditions, as it belongs to the
deer to run its best. So it is the part of a friend, if need arise, to
give his comfort or his life for a friend; of a mother to love and
defend her children; though it is true that in the light of eternity
these 'creaturely' affections shrivel into their native worthlessness.
If the will of God is done, and done willingly, all is well. You may, if
it brings you great suffering, feel the pain. You may even, through
human weakness, weep or groan; that can be forgiven. Ἔσωθεν μέντοι μὴ
στενάξης, 'But in the centre of your being groan not!' Accept the Cosmos.
Will joyously that which God wills and make the eternal Purpose your
own.
I will say no more of this great body of teaching, as I have dealt with
it in a separate publication.[100:1] But I would point out two special
advantages of a psychological kind which distinguish Stoicism from many
systems of philosophy. First, though it never consciously faced the
psychological problem of instinct, it did see clearly that man does not
necessarily pursue what pleases him most, or what is most profitable to
him, or even his 'good'. It saw that man can determine his end, and may
well choose pain in preference to pleasure. This saved the school from a
great deal of that false schematization which besets most forms of
rationalistic psychology. Secondly, it did build up a system of thought
on which, both in good days and evil, a life can be lived which is not
only saintly, but practically wise and human and beneficent. It did for
practical purposes solve the problem of living, without despair and
without grave, or at least without gross, illusion.
The other great school of the fourth century, a school which, in the
matter of ethics, may be called the only true rival of Stoicism, was
also rooted in defeat. But it met defeat in a different spirit.[101:1]
Epicurus, son of Neocles, of the old Athenian clan of the Philaïdae, was
born on a colony in Samos in 341 B. C. His father was evidently poor;
else he would hardly have left Athens to live on a colonial farm, nor
have had to eke out his farming by teaching an elementary school. We do
not know how much the small boy learned from his father. But for older
students there was a famous school on the neighbouring island of Teos,
where a certain Nausiphanes taught the Ionian tradition of Mathematics
and Physics as well as rhetoric and literary subjects. Epicurus went to
this school when he was fourteen, and seems, among other things, to have
imbibed the Atomic Theory of Democritus without realizing that it was
anything peculiar. He felt afterwards as if his school-days had been
merely a waste of time. At the age of eighteen he went to Athens, the
centre of the philosophic world, but he only went, as Athenian citizens
were in duty bound, to perform his year of military service as
_ephêbus_. Study was to come later. The next year, however, 322,
Perdiccas of Thrace made an attack on Samos and drove out the Athenian
colonists. Neocles had by then lived on his bit of land for thirty
years, and was old to begin life again. The ruined family took refuge in
Colophon, and there Epicurus joined them. They were now too poor for the
boy to go abroad to study philosophy. He could only make the best of a
hard time and puzzle alone over the problems of life.
Recent years have taught us that there are few forms of misery harder
than that endured by a family of refugees, and it is not likely to have
been easier in ancient conditions. Epicurus built up his philosophy, it
would seem, while helping his parents and brothers through this bad
time. The problem was how to make the life of their little colony
tolerable, and he somehow solved it. It was not the kind of problem
which Stoicism and the great religions specially set themselves; it was
at once too unpretending and too practical. One can easily imagine the
condition for which he had to prescribe. For one thing, the unfortunate
refugees all about him would torment themselves with unnecessary
terrors. The Thracians were pursuing them. The Gods hated them; they
must obviously have committed some offence or impiety. (It is always
easy for disheartened men to discover in themselves some sin that
deserves punishment.) It would surely be better to die at once; except
that, with that sin upon them, they would only suffer more dreadfully
beyond the grave! In their distress they jarred, doubtless, on one
another's nerves; and mutual bitterness doubled their miseries.
Epicurus is said to have had poor health, and the situation was one
where even the best health would be sorely tried. But he had superhuman
courage, and--what does not always go with such courage--a very
affectionate and gentle nature. In later life all his three brothers
were his devoted disciples--a testimonial accorded to few prophets or
founders of religions. And he is the first man in the record of European
history whose mother was an important element in his life. Some of his
letters to her have been preserved, and show a touch of intimate
affection which of course must have existed between human beings from
the remotest times, but of which we possess no earlier record. And
fragments of his letters to his friends strike the same note.[103:1]
His first discovery was that men torture themselves with unnecessary
fears. He must teach them courage, θαρρεῖν ἀρὸ τῶν θεῶν, θαρρεῖν ἀρὸ
ἀνθρώπων, to fear no evil from either man or God. God is a blessed
being; and no blessed being either suffers evil or inflicts evil on
others. And as for men, most of the evils you fear from them can be
avoided by Justice; and if they do come, they can be borne. Death is
like sleep, an unconscious state, nowise to be feared. Pain when it
comes can be endured; it is the anticipation that makes men miserable
and saps their courage. The refugees were forgotten by the world, and
had no hope of any great change in their condition. Well, he argued, so
much the better! Let them till the earth and love one another, and they
would find that they had already in them that Natural Happiness which is
man's possession until he throws it away. And of all things that
contribute to happiness the greatest is Affection, φιλία.
Like the Cynics and Stoics, he rejected the world and all its
conventions and prizes, its desires and passions and futility. But where
the Stoic and Cynic proclaimed that in spite of all the pain and
suffering of a wicked world, man can by the force of his own will be
virtuous, Epicurus brought the more surprising good news that man can
after all be happy.
But to make this good news credible he had to construct a system of
thought. He had to answer the temple authorities and their adherents
among the vulgar, who threatened his followers with the torments of
Hades for their impiety. He had to answer the Stoics and Cynics,
preaching that all is worthless except Aretê; and the Sceptics, who
dwelt on the fallibility of the senses, and the logical impossibility of
knowledge.