CHAPTER VII.

THE STUDY OF NATURE. COURSE, CHARACTER, AND GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSE.

By virtue of a law inherent in nature, Primary Being passes over into particular objects; for, involving as it does the conception of a forming and creating force, it must as necessarily develop into a universe, as a seed or ovum must develop into a plant or animal. Primary fire—so taught the Stoics, following Heraclitus—first goes over into vapour, then into moisture; one part of this moisture is precipitated in the form of earth, another remains as water, whilst a third part evaporating constitutes atmospheric air, and air, again, enkindles fire out of itself. By the mutual play of these four elements the world is formed, built round the earth as a centre; heat, as it is developed out of water, moulding the chaotic mass. By the separation of these elements, a distinction between the active and the passive powers of nature—between the soul of the world and the body of the world—becomes apparent. The moisture into which the primary fire was first changed represents the body, just as the heat latent in it represents the soul; or, taking the later fourfold division of the elements, the two lower ones correspond to matter, the two higher ones to acting force.

As the distinction between matter and force has its origin in time, so it will also have an end in time. Matter which primary Being has separated from itself to form its body is being gradually resolved into primary Being again; so that, at the end of the present course of things, a general conflagration of the world will restore all things to their original form, in which everything derivative will have ceased to exist, and pure Deity, or primary fire, will alone remain in its original purity. This resolution of the world into fire or ether, the Stoics thought, would take place, through the same intermediate stages as its generation from the primary fire. Cleanthes, following his peculiar view as to the seat of the governing force in the world, supposed that its destruction would come from the sun.

No sooner, however, will everything have returned to its original unity, and the course of the world have come to an end, than the formation of a new world will begin, so exactly corresponding with the previous world that every particular thing, every particular person, and every occurrence will recur in it, precisely as they occurred in the world preceding. Hence the history of the world and of Deity—as, indeed, with the eternity of matter and acting force, must necessarily be the case—revolves in an endless cycle through exactly the same stages. Still there were not wanting, even in comparatively early times, members of the Stoic School who entertained doubts on this teaching; and among the most distinguished of the later Stoics some gave it up altogether. Besides the periodical destruction by fire, periodical destructions by floods were also assumed; there being, however, a difference of opinion as to whether the whole universe, or only the earth and its inhabitants, were subject to these floods.

One point established by the generation and destruction of the world—the uncertainty of all particular things, and the unconditional dependence of everything on a universal law and the course of the universe—is a leading one in the Stoic enquiries into nature. All things in nature come about by virtue of a natural and unchangeable connection of cause and effect, as the nature of the universe and the general law require. This absolute necessity, regulating all Being and Becoming, is expressed in the conception of Fate or Destiny (ἡ εἱμαρμένη). Viewed from the point of view of natural science, Destiny is only another name for primary Being, for the all-pervading, all-producing Breath, for the artistic fire which is the soul of the world. But again the activity of this Being being always rational and according to law, Destiny may also be described as the Reason of the World, as universal Law, as the rational form of the world’s course. When regarded as the groundwork of natural formations, this primary Being or general Law is called Nature; but when it appears as the cause of the orderly arrangement and development of the world, it is known as Providence; or in popular language it is called Zeus, or the will of Zeus; and in this sense it is said that nothing happens without the will of Zeus.

In action as the creative force in nature, this universal Reason also bears the name of Generative Reason (λόγος σπερματικός). It bears this name more immediately in relation to the universe, not only as being the generating power by which all things are produced from primary fire as from seed according to an inner law, but because in the present condition of things all form and shape, all life and reason, grow out of it, in short, because primary fire and reason contain in themselves the germ of all things. In the same sense, generative powers in the plural, or λόγοι σπερματικοί, are spoken of as belonging to Deity and Nature; and in treating of man, λόγοι σπερματικοί denote the generative powers as a part of the soul, and must be thought of as bearing the same relation to the individual soul that the generative powers of Nature do to the soul of nature. By the term Generative Reason, therefore, must be understood the creative and forming forces in nature, which have collectively produced the universe, and particular exercises of which produce individual things. These forces, agreeably with the ordinary Stoic speculations, are spoken of as the original material, or material germ of things. On the other hand, they also constitute the form of things—the law which determines their shape and qualities, the λόγος—only we must beware of trying to think of form apart from matter. Just as the igneous or ethereal material of primary Being is in itself the same as the forming and creating element in things, the Reason of the world or the Soul of nature; so the atmospheric substance in the seeds of individual things, in which the Stoics thought the generative power (σπέρμα) alone resides, is in itself the germ out of which the corresponding thing is produced by virtue of an inherent law. The inward form is the only permanent element in things amid the perpetual change of materials. It constitutes the identity of the universe; and whereas matter is constantly changing from one form to another, the universal law of the process alone continues unchangeably the same.

All parts of the Stoic system lead so unmistakeably to the conclusion, not only that the world as a whole is governed by Providence, but that every part of it is subject to the same unchangeable laws, that no definite arguments would appear necessary to establish this point. Nevertheless, the Stoics lost no opportunity of meeting objections to their views [(a) Argument from the general convictions of mankind.] in the fullest manner. In the true spirit of a Stoic, Chrysippus appealed to the general conviction of mankind, as expressed in the names used to denote fate and destiny, and to the language of poetry. [(b) Argument from the perfection of God.] Nor was it difficult to show that a divine government of the world followed of necessity from the Stoic conception of the perfection of God. Besides, in proving the existence of a God by the argument drawn from the adaptation of means to ends, a providential government of the world was at the same [(c) Argument from the theory of necessity.] time proved. Chrysippus also thought to defend his theory of necessity in the same strictly logical manner. For must not every judgment be either true or false? And does not this apply to judgments which refer to future events, as well as to others? Judgments, however, referring to the future can only be true when what they affirm must come to pass of necessity; they can only be false when what they affirm is impossible; and, accordingly, everything that takes place must follow of necessity from the causes which produce it.

The same process of reasoning, transferred from the outer world to the inner world of mind, underlies the argument from the foreknowledge of God. If in the one case it is alleged that whatever is true, before it comes to pass, is necessary, so in the other it is said to be necessary, if it can be truly known before it comes to pass.

To this argument may be added a further one to which the Stoics attached great importance—the argument from the existence of divination. If it is impossible to know beforehand with certainty what is accidental, it is also impossible to predict it.

But the real kernel of the Stoic fatalism is expressed in the maxim, that nothing can take place without a sufficient cause, nor, under given circumstances, can happen differently from what has happened. This were as impossible, according to the Stoics, as for something to come out of nothing; were it possible, the unity of the world would be at an end, consisting, as it does, in the chain-like dependence of cause upon cause, and in the absolute necessity of everything and of every change. The Stoic doctrine of necessity was the direct consequence of the Stoic pantheism. The divine power which rules the world could not be the absolute uniting cause of all things, if there existed anything in any sense independent of it, and unless one unchanging causal connection governed every thing.

Divine Providence, therefore, does not extend to individual things taken by themselves, but only to things in their relation to the whole. Everything being in every respect determined by this relation, and being consequently subject to the general order of the world, it follows that we may say that God cares not only for the universe, but for all individual members of the universe. The converse of this may also be asserted with equal justice, viz. that God’s care is directed to the whole, and not to individuals, and that it extends to things great, but not to things small. Directly it always extends to the whole, indirectly to individuals throughout the whole, in so far as they are therein contained, and their condition is determined by its condition. The Stoic notion of Providence is therefore entirely based on a view of the universe as a whole; individual things and persons can only come into consideration as dependent parts of this whole.

The Stoics were thus involved in a difficulty which besets every theory of necessity—the difficulty of doing justice to the claims of morality, and of vindicating the existence of moral responsibility. This difficulty became for them all the more pressing the higher those claims were advanced, and the more severely they judged the great majority of their fellow-men. To overcome it, Chrysippus appears to have made most energetic efforts. The existence of chance he could not allow, it being his aim to establish that what seems to be accidental has always some hidden cause. Nor would he allow that everything is necessary, since that can only be called necessary which depends on no external conditions, and is therefore always true; in other words, what is eternal and unchangeable, not that which comes to pass in time, however inevitable it may be. And, by a similar process of reasoning, he still tried to rescue the idea of the Possible, little as that idea accords with the Stoic system.

In reference to human actions, the Stoics did not allow the freedom of the will, in the proper sense of the term; but were of opinion that absence of freedom does not prejudice the character of the will as a deciding power. For is not one and the same all-determining power everywhere active, working in each particular being according to the law of its nature, in one way in organic beings, in another in inorganic beings, differently again in animals and plants, in rational and irrational creatures? And albeit every action may be brought about by the co-operation of causes depending on the nature of things and the character of the agent, is it not still free, the resultant of our own impulses and decision? Involuntary it would only be were it produced by external causes alone, without any co-operation, on the part of our wills, with external causes. Moral responsibility, according to the Stoics, depends only on freedom of the will. What emanates from my will is my action, no matter whether it be possible for me to act differently or not. Praise and blame, rewards and punishment, express the judgment of society relative to the character of certain persons or actions. Whether they could have been different, or not, is irrelevant. Otherwise virtue and vice must be set down as things not in our power, for which, consequently, we are not responsible, seeing that when a man is once virtuous or vicious, he cannot be otherwise; and the highest perfection, that of the Gods, is absolutely unchangeable. Chrysippus even endeavoured to show, not only that his whole theory of destiny was in harmony with the claims of morality and moral responsibility, but that it presupposed their existence. The arrangement of the universe, he argued, involves law, and law involves the distinction between what is conventionally right and what is conventionally wrong, between what deserves praise and what deserves blame. Moreover, it is impossible to think of destiny without thinking of the world, or to think of the world without thinking of the Gods, who are supremely good. Hence the idea of destiny involves also that of goodness, which again includes the contrast between virtue and vice, between what is praiseworthy and what is blameworthy. If his opponents objected that, if everything is determined by destiny, individual action is superfluous, since what has been once foreordained must happen, come what may, Chrysippus replied:—There is a distinction to be made between simple and complex predestination; the consequences of human actions being simply results of those actions, are quite as much foreordained as the actions themselves.

From these observations, it appears that the Stoics never intended to allow man to hold a different position, in regard to destiny, from that held by other beings. All the actions of man—in fact, his destiny—are decided by his relation to things: one individual only differs from another in that one acts on his own impulse, and agreeably with his own feelings, whereas another, under compulsion and against his will, conforms to the eternal law of the world.

Everything in the world being produced by one and the same divine power, the world, as regards its structure, is an organic whole, in respect of its [(1) Its unity and perfections.] constitution perfect. The unity of the world, a doctrine distinguishing the Stoics from the Epicureans, followed as a corollary from the unity of primary substance and of primary force. It was further proved by the intimate connection, or, as the Stoics called it, the sympathy of all its parts, and, in particular, by the coincidence of the phenomena of earth and heaven. The perfection of the world follows generally from a consideration of fundamental principles. But the Stoics made use of many arguments in support of its perfection, appealing, after the example of preceding philosophers, sometimes to its beauty, and, at other times, to the adaptation of means to ends. An appeal to beauty is the assertion of Chrysippus, that nature made many creatures for the sake of beauty, the peacock, for instance, for the sake of its tail ;—and the dictum of Marcus Aurelius, that what is purely subsidiary and subservient to no purpose, even what is ugly or frightful in nature, has peculiar attractions of its own; and the same kind of consideration may have led to the Stoic assertion, that no two things in nature are altogether alike. Their chief argument, however, for the beauty of the world, was based on the shape, the size, and the colour of the heavenly structure.

The other line of argument is followed not so much in individual expressions. But owing no doubt to the pre-eminently practical character of its treatment of things, the Stoic view of nature, like the Socratic, has ever an eye on the adaptation of means to ends in the world. As, on the one hand, this adaptation of means to ends is the most convincing proof of the existence of deity, so, on the other hand, by it, more than by anything else, the divine government of the world makes itself manifest. Like Socrates, however, they took a very superficial view of the adaptation of means to ends, arguing that everything in the world was created for the benefit of some other thing—plants for the support of animals, animals for the support and the service of man, the world for the benefit of Gods and men —not unfrequently degenerating into the ridiculous and pedantic, in their endeavours to trace the special end for which each thing exists. But, in asking the further question, For what purpose do Gods and men exist? they could not help being at length carried beyond the idea of a relative end to the idea of an end-in-itself. The end for which Gods and men exist is that of mutual society. Or, expressing the same idea in language more philosophical, the end of man is the contemplation and imitation of the world; man has only importance as being a part of a whole; only this whole is perfect and an end-in-itself.

The greater the importance attached by the Stoics to the perfection of the world, the less were they able to avoid the difficult problem of reconciling the various forms of evil in the world. By the attention which, following the example of Plato, they gave to this question, they may be said to be the real creators of the moral theory of the world. The character of this moral theory was already determined by their system. Subordinating individuals, as that system did, to the law of the whole, it met the charges preferred against the evil found in the world by the general maxim, that imperfection in details is necessary for the perfection of the whole. This maxim, however, might be explained in several ways, according to the meaning assigned to the term necessary. If necessity is taken to be physical, the existence of evil is excused as being a natural necessity, from which not even deity could grant exemption. If, on the other hand, the necessity is not a physical one, but one arising from the relation of means to ends, evil is justified as a condition or necessary means for bringing about good. Both views are combined in the three chief questions involved in the moral theory of the world: the existence of physical evil, the existence of moral evil, and the relation of outward circumstances to morality.

The existence of physical evil gave the Stoics little trouble, since they refused to regard it as an evil at all, as will be seen in treating of their ethical system. It was enough for them to refer evils of this kind—diseases, for instance—to natural causes, and to regard them as the inevitable consequences of causes framed by nature to serve a definite purpose. Still, they did not fail to point out that many things only become evil by a perverted use, and that other things, ordinarily regarded as evils, are of the greatest value.

Greater difficulty was found by the Stoics to beset the attempt to justify the existence of moral evil, and the difficulty was enhanced in their case by the prevalence and intensity of moral evil in the world according to their view. By their theory of necessity they were prevented from shifting the responsibility for moral evil from natural law or deity on to man, which is one way out of the difficulty. In not altogether eschewing this course, and yet refusing to allow to deity any participation in evil, and referring evil to the free will and intention of man, they acted as other systems of necessity have done before, reserving the final word. The real solution which they gave to the difficulty is to be found partly in the assertion that even the deity is not able to keep human nature free from faults, and partly in the consideration that the existence of evil is necessary, as a counterpart and supplement to good, and that, in the long run, evil will be turned by the deity into good.

The third point in their moral theory of the world, the connection between moral worth and happiness, engaged all the subtlety of Chrysippus and his followers. To deny any connection between them would have been to contradict the ordinary views of the relation of means to ends. Besides, they were prepared to regard some part of the evils of life as divine judgments. Still there were facts which could not be reconciled with this view—the misfortunes of the virtuous, the good fortune of the vicious—and these required explanation. The task of explaining them appears to have involved the Stoics in considerable embarrassment, nor were their answers altogether satisfactory. The spirit of their system, however, rendered only one explanation possible: no real evil could happen to the virtuous, no real good fortune could fall to the lot of the vicious. Apparent misfortune will be regarded by the wise man partly as a natural consequence, partly as a wholesome training for his moral powers; there is nothing which is not matter for rational action: everything that happens, when rightly considered, contributes to our good; nothing that is secured by moral depravity is in itself desirable. With this view it was possible to connect a belief in divine punishment, by saying that what to a good man is a training of his powers, is a real misfortune and consequently a punishment to a bad man; but we are not in a position to say whether the scattered hints of Chrysippus really bear this meaning.

The whole investigation is one involving much doubt and inconsistency. Natural considerations frequently intertwine with considerations based on the adaptation of means to ends; the divine power is oftentimes treated as a will working towards a definite purpose, at one time arranging all things for the best with unlimited power, at another time according to an unchangeable law of nature; but all these inconsistencies and defects belong to other moral theories of the world, quite as much as they belong to that of the Stoics.