1. Physics

As regards the Physics of the Stoics, we may in the first place say that it does not contain much that is peculiar to itself, since it is rather a compendium of the Physics of older times, and more especially of that of Heraclitus. However, each of the three schools now being dealt with has had a very characteristic and definite terminology, which is more than can be altogether said of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Thus we must now make ourselves familiar with the particular expressions used and with their significance. The following is the essence of the Physics of the Stoics: The determining reason (λόγος) is the ruling, all-productive substance and activity, extended throughout all, and constituting the basis of all natural forms; this preponderating substance, in its rational effectuating activity, they call God. It is a world-soul endowed with intelligence, and, since they called it God, this is really Pantheism. But all Philosophy is pantheistic, for it goes to prove that the rational Notion is in the world. The hymn of Cleanthes is to this effect: “Nothing happens on earth without thee, O Dæmon, neither in the ethereal pole of the heavens, nor in the sea, excepting what the wicked do through their own foolishness. But thou knowest how to make crooked things straight, and thou orderest that which is without order, and the inimical is friendly to thee. For thus hast thou united everything into one, the good to the evil; thus one Notion (λόγος) is in everything that ever was, from which those mortals who are evil flee. How unhappy are they, too, who, ever longing to possess the good, do not perceive God’s universal law, nor listen thereto, the which if they but obeyed with reason, (σὺν νῷ) they would attain a good and happy life!” The Stoics thus believed the study of nature to be essential, in order to know in nature its universal laws, which constitute the universal reason, in order that we might also know therefrom our duties, the law for man, and live conformably to the universal laws of nature. “Zeno,” according to Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 14), “holds this natural law to be divine, and believes that it has the power to dictate the right and prohibit what is wrong.” Thus the Stoics desired to know this rational Notion which rules in nature not altogether on its own account; and the study of nature was consequently to them rather a mere matter of utility.

If we are now to give some further idea of what these Physics are, we may say that the Stoics distinguish in the corporeal—although nature is only the manifestation of one common law—the moment of activity and that of passivity; the former is, according to Aristotle, active reason, or, according to Spinoza, natura naturans; the latter passive reason, or natura naturata. The latter is matter, substance without quality, for quality is, generally speaking, form, i.e. that which forms universal matter into something particular. This is indeed the reason likewise that with the Greeks quality is called τὸ ποιόν, just as we in German derive Beschaffenheit from Schaffen—that which is posited, the negative moment. But the actuating, as the totality of forms, is, according to the Stoics, the Notion in matter; and this is God. (Diog. Laërt. VII. 134.)

As regards the further nature of these forms, these universal laws of nature, and the formation of the world, the Stoics have in the main adopted the ideas of Heraclitus, for Zeno studied him very particularly (supra, p. 239). They thus make fire the real Notion, the active principle which passes into the other elements as its forms. The world arises by the self-existent gods driving the universal material substance (οὐσίαν) out of the fire, through the air, into the water; and as in all generation the moisture which surrounds a seed comes first as the begetter of all that is particular, so that conception, which in this respect is called seed-containing (σπερματικός), remains in the water and then actuates the indeterminate Being of matter into the origination of the other determinations. The elements, fire, water, air and earth, are consequently primary. Respecting them the Stoics speak in a manner which has no longer any philosophic interest. “The coagulation of the denser parts of the world forms the earth; the thinner portion becomes air, and if this becomes more and more rarefied, it produces fire. From the combination of these elements are produced plants, animals, and other kinds of things.” The thinking soul is, according to them, of a similar fiery nature, and all human souls, the animal principle of life, and also plants, are parts of the universal world-soul, of the universal fire; and this central point is that which rules and impels. Or, as it is put, souls are a fiery breath. Sight, in the same way, is a breath of the ruling body (ἡγεμονικοῦ) transmitted to the eyes; similarly hearing is an extended, penetrating breath, sent from the ruling body to the ears.

Respecting the process of nature we may further say this: Fire, Stobæus tells us (Eclog. phys. I. p. 312), is called by the Stoics an element in a pre-eminent sense, because from it, as the primary element, all else arises through a transformation, and in it, as in an ultimate, everything is fused and becomes dissolved. Thus Heraclitus and Stoicism rightly comprehended this process as a universal and eternal one. This has even been done by Cicero, though in a more superficial way; in this reflection he falsely sees the conflagration of the world in time and the end of the world, which is quite another matter. For in his work De natura Deorum (II. 46) he makes a Stoic speak thus: “In the end (ad extremum) everything will be consumed by fire; for if all moisture becomes exhausted the earth can neither be nourished, nor can air return into existence. Thus nothing but fire remains, through whose reanimation and through God the world will be renewed and the same order will return.” This is spoken after the manner of the ordinary conception. But to the Stoics everything is merely a Becoming. However deficient this may be, God, as the fiery principle, is yet to them the whole activity of nature, and likewise the rational order of the same, and in this lies the perfect pantheism of the Stoic conception of nature. Not only do they call this ordering force God, but also nature, fate or necessity (εἱμαρμένην), likewise Jupiter, the moving force of matter, reason (νοῦν) and foresight (πρόνοιαν); to them all these are synonymous. Because the rational brings forth all, the Stoics compare this impelling activity to a seed, and say: “The seed which sends forth something rational (λογικόν) is itself rational. The world sends forth the seeds of the rational and is thus in itself rational;” that is to say, rational both generally, in the whole, and in each particular existent form. “All beginning of movement in any nature and soul rises from a ruling principle, and all powers which are sent forth upon the individual parts of the whole proceed from the ruling power as from a source; so that each force that is in the part is also in the whole, because the force is distributed by the ruling power in it. The world embraces the seed-containing conceptions of the life which is in conformity with the conception,” i.e. all particular principles. The Physics of the Stoics is thus Heraclitean, though the logical element is entirely at one with Aristotle; and we may regard it as being such. However, speaking generally, only those belonging to earlier times had a physical element in their philosophy: those coming later neglected Physics entirely and kept alone to Logic and to Ethics.

The Stoics again speak of God and the gods according to the popular manner of regarding them. They say that “God is the ungenerated and imperishable maker of all this disposition of things, who after certain periods of time absorbs all substance in Himself, and then reproduces it from Himself.” There no definite perception is reached, and even the above relation of God, as absolute form, to matter has attained no developed clearness. The universe is at one time the unity of form and matter, and God is the soul of the world; at another time, the universe, as nature, is the Being of the constituted matter, and that soul is antagonistic to it, but the activity of God is a disposition of the original forms of matter. This opposition is devoid of the essentials of union and division.

Thus the Stoics remain at the general conception that each individual is comprehended in a Notion, and this again in the universal Notion, which is the world itself. But because the Stoics recognized the rational as the active principle in nature, they took its phenomena in their individuality as manifestations of the divine; and their pantheism has thereby associated itself with the common ideas about the gods as with the superstitions which are connected therewith (p. 235), with belief in all sorts of miracles and with divination—that is to say, they believe that in nature there are intimations given which men must receive through divine rites and worship. Epicureanism, on the contrary, proceeds towards the liberation of men from this superstition to which the Stoics are entirely given over. Thus Cicero, in his work De divinatione, has taken the most part of his material from them, and much is expressly given as being the reasoning of the Stoics. When, for example, he speaks of the premonitory signs given in connection with human events, all this is conformable with the Stoic philosophy. The fact that an eagle flies to the right, the Stoics accepted as a revelation of God, believing that thereby it was intimated to men what it was advisable for them to do in some particular circumstances. Just as we find the Stoics speaking of God as having universal necessity, to them God, as Notion, has hence a relation to men and human ends likewise, and in this respect He is providence; thus they now arrived at the conception of particular gods also. Cicero says in the work quoted above (II. 49): “Chrysippus, Diogenes and Antipater argued thus: If gods exist, and if they do not let men know beforehand what is to happen in the future, they cannot love men, or else they themselves do not know what stands before them in the future, or they are of opinion that it does not signify whether man knows it or not, or they consider such a revelation beneath the dignity of their majesty, or they cannot make it comprehensible to men.” All this they refute, for amongst other things they say that nothing can exceed the beneficence of the gods, &c. Thus they draw the conclusion that “the gods make known to men the future”—a system of reasoning in which the entirely particular ends of individuals also form the interests of the gods. To make men know and comprehend at one time and not at another, is an inconsistency, i.e. an incomprehensibility, but this very incomprehensibility, this obscurity, is the triumph of the common way of regarding religions affairs. Thus in the Stoics all the superstitions of Rome had their strongest supporters; all external, teleological superstition is taken under their protection and justified. Because the Stoics started from the assertion that reason is God (it certainly is divine, but it does not exhaust divinity), they immediately made a bound from this universal to the revelation of that which operates for the sake of individual ends. The truly rational is doubtless revealed to men as the law of God; but the useful, what is in conformity with individual ends, is not revealed in this truly divine revelation.