CHAPTER IX.. The Study of Nature. Man.

THE STUDY OF NATURE. MAN.

The Stoic teaching becomes peculiarly interesting, when it treats of Man; and the line it here follows is decided by the tone of the whole system. On the one hand, the Stoic materialism shows itself most unmistakeably in the department of anthropology; on the other hand, the conviction that all actions must be referred to active powers, and all the several active powers to one original power, can not be held without leading to a belief in the oneness and in the regulating capacity of the soul. Not only does it follow, as a corollary from the materialistic view of the world, that the soul must be in its nature corporeal, but the Stoics took pains to uphold this view by special arguments. Whatever, they said, influences the body, and is by it influenced in turn, whatever is united with the body and again separated from it, must be corporeal. How, then, can the soul be other than corporeal? Whatever has extension in three dimensions is corporeal; this is the case with the soul, since it extends in three directions over the whole body. Thought, moreover, and motion are due to animal life. Animal life is nurtured and kept in health by the breath of life. Experience proves that mental qualities are propagated by natural generation; they must, therefore, be connected with a corporeal substratum. As therefore, the mind is nothing but fiery breath, so the human soul is described by the Stoics sometimes as fire, sometimes as breath, at other times, more accurately, as warm breath, diffused throughout the body, and forming a bond of union for the body, in the very same way that the soul of the world is diffused throughout the world, and forms a bond of union for the world. This warm breath was believed to be connected with the blood; and hence the soul was said to be fed by vapours from the blood, just as the stars are fed by vapours from the earth.

The same hypothesis was also used to explain the origin of the soul. One part of the soul was believed to be transmitted to the young in the seed. From the part so transmitted there arises, by development within the womb, first the soul of a plant; and this becomes the soul of a living creature after birth by the action of the outer air. This view led to the further hypothesis that the seat of the soul must be in the breast, not in the brain; since not only breath and warm blood, but also the voice, the immediate expression of thought, comes from the breast.

Nor is this hypothesis out of harmony with the notions otherwise entertained by the Stoics as to the nature of man. Plato and Aristotle had already fixed on the heart as the central organ of the lower powers; the brain they assigned to reason, with the view of distinguishing the rational from the mere animal soul. When, therefore, the Stoics assimilated man’s rational activity to the activity of the senses, deducing both from one and the same source, it was natural that they would depart from Aristotle’s view. Accordingly, the various parts of the soul were supposed to discharge themselves from their centre in the heart into the several organs, in the form of atmospheric currents. Seven such parts are enumerated, besides the dominant part or reason, which was also called ἡγεμονικὸν, διανοητικὸν, λογιστικὸν, or λογισμός. These seven parts consist of the five senses, the power of reproduction, and the power of speech; and, following out their view of the close relation of speech and thought, great importance is attached to the power of speech. At the same time, the Stoics upheld the oneness of the substance of the soul with greater vigour than either Plato or Aristotle had done. Reason, or τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, is with them the primary power, of which all other powers are only parts, or derivative powers. Even feeling and desire they derive from it, in direct contradiction to the teaching of Plato and Aristotle; and this power is declared to be the seat of personal identity, a point on which former philosophers had refrained from expressing any opinion.

The individual soul bears the same relation to the soul of the universe that a part does to the whole. The human soul is not only a part, as are all other living powers, of the universal power of life, but, because it possesses reason, it has a special relationship to the Divine Being —a relationship which becomes closer in proportion as we allow greater play to the divine element in ourselves, i.e. to reason. On this very account, however, the soul cannot escape the law of the Divine Being, in the shape of general necessity, or destiny. It is a mere delusion to suppose that the soul possesses a freedom independent of the world’s course. The human will, like everything else in the world, is bound into the indissoluble chain of natural causes, and that irrespectively of our knowing by what causes the will is decided or not. Its freedom consists in this, that, instead of being ruled from without, it obeys the call of its own nature, external circumstances concurring. To this power of self-determination, however, the greatest value is attached. Not only are our actions due to it to such an extent that only because of it can they be considered ours, but even our judgments are, as the Stoics thought, dependent on it. The soul itself being open to truth or error, convictions are quite as much in our power as actions: both are alike the necessary result of the will. And just as the individual soul does not possess activity independently of the universal soul, no more can the individual soul escape the law of destiny. It, too, at the end of the world’s course, will be resolved into the primary substance, the Divine Being. The only point about which the Stoics were undecided was, whether all souls would last until that time as separate souls, which was the view of Cleanthes, or only the souls of the wise, as Chrysippus held.

The effects of the Stoic principles appear unmistakeably in the above statements. They, however, pervade the whole body of the Stoical views on man. From one point of view, the theory of necessity, and the denial of everlasting life after death, seem quite unintelligible in a system the moral tone of which is so high; yet the connection of these theories with the Stoic ethics is very intimate. These theories commended themselves to the Stoics, as they have done in later times to Spinoza and Schleiermacher, because they corresponded with their fundamental view of morality, according to which the individual is the instrument of reason in general, and a dependent portion of the collective universe. Moreover, since the Stoics admitted a future existence, of limited, but yet indefinite, length, the same practical results followed from their belief as from the current belief in immortality. The statements of Seneca, that this life is a prelude to a better; that the body is a lodging-house, from which the soul will return to its own home; his joy in looking forward to the day which will rend the bonds of the body asunder, which he, in common with the early Christians, calls the birthday of eternal life; his description of the peace of the eternity there awaiting us, of the freedom and bliss of the heavenly life, of the light of knowledge which will there be shed on all the secrets of nature; his language on the future recognition and happy society of souls made perfect; his seeing in death a great day of judgment, when sentence will be pronounced on every one; his making the thought of a future life the great stimulus to moral conduct here; even the way in which he consoles himself for the destruction of the soul by the thought that it will live again in another form hereafter —all contain nothing at variance with the Stoic teaching, however near they may approach to Platonic or even Christian modes of thought. Seneca merely expanded the teaching of his School in one particular direction, in which it approaches most closely to Platonism; and, of all the Stoics, Seneca was the most distinctly Platonic.

Excepting the two points which have been discussed at an earlier time, and one other point relating to the origin of ideas and emotions, which will be considered subsequently, little is on record relating to the psychological views of the Stoics.