bciio, that the difference between Democritus and
Epicurus
wan only a rela- 'jie «ne.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
Particularly in the case of physics, the rich development of the special sciences must ultimately keep general principles always alive and in a state of flux.
In this respect we notice first that the Peripatetic School, during the first generations, made a noteworthy change in the principles for explaining Nature which it had received from its master.
1. The beginning of this is found already with Theophrastus, who doubtless defended all the main doctrines of Aristotelianism, espe cially against the Stoics, but yet in part went his own ways. The extant fragment of his metaphysics discusses, among the aporiae, principally such difficulties as were contained in the Aristotelian conceptions of the relation of the world to the deity. The Stagi- rite had conceived of Nature (<£wn«) as a being in itself alive
(£<uov), and yet had. conceived of its entire motion as a (teleological) effect of the divine Reason ; God, as pure Form, was separated from the world, transcendent ; and yet, as animating, first-moving power, he was immanent in it. This chief metaphysical problem of the following period was seen by Theophrastus, though his own attitude toward it remained fixed by the bounds of Aristotle's doctrine. On the other hand, he shows a more definite tendency in the closely connected question regarding the relation of reason to the lower psychical activities. The vovs was regarded, on the one hand (con sidered as Form of the animal soul), as immanent, inborn; on the other hand, in its purity, as different in essence, and as having come
Chat. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Peripatetics. 179
into the individual soul from without. Here now Theophrastus decided absolutely against transcendence; he subsumed the vofc also as a self-developing activity, under the concept of a cosmic process,1 of motion (mnprtc), and set it beside the animal soul as something different, not in kind, but in degree only.
Strato proceeded still more energetically in the same direction. He removed completely the limits between reason and the lower activities of ideation. Both, he taught, form an inseparable unity ; there is no thought without perceptions, and just as little is there sense-perception without the co-operation of thought ; both together belong to the unitary consciousness, which he, with the Stoics, calls ro iyifunnxov (cf. § 14, 3). But Strato applied the same thought, which he carried out psychologically, to the analogous metaphysical relation also. The yycpwucov of the dtiovt, also, the Reason of Nature, cannot be regarded as something separated from her. Whether now this may be expressed in the form that Strato did not think the hypothesis of the deity necessary for the explanation of Nature and its phenomena, or in the form that he postulated Nature itself as God, but denied it not only external resemblance to man, but even consciousness,* — in any case, Stratonism, regarded from the stand point of Aristotle's teaching, forms a one-sidedly naturalistic or pantheistic modification. He denies spiritual monotheism, the con ception of the transcendence of God, and by teaching that a pure Form is as unthinkable as mere matter, he pushes the Platonic element in the Aristotelian metaphysics, which had remained just in the thought of the separation {\iapurnot) of reason from matter, so far into the background that the element derived from Democ- hroi becomes again entirely free. Strato sees in what takes place in the world, only an immanent necessity of Nature, and no longer the working of a spiritual, extramundane cause.
Yet this naturalism remains still in dependence upon Aristotle, in to far as it seeks the natural causes of the cosmic processes, not in the atoms and their quantitative determinations, but expressly in the original qualities {irworrjm) and powers (Swo^tw) of things. If among these it emphasised especially warmth and cold, this was quite in the spirit of the dynamic conceptions held by the older Hjlozoism, and to this, also, Strato seems most nearly related in his undecided, intermediate position between mechanical and teleological explanation of the world. Just for this' reason, however, this side- development ran its course with Strato himself without further remit, for it was already outrun at the beginning by the Stoic and
1 Stepl. Phgs. 226 a. * Cic. Acad. II. 38, 121 ; Dt Nat. Dtor. I. 13, 36.
180 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Ethical Period. [Pakt II.
the Epicurean physics. These both defended also the standpoint of the immanent explanation of Nature, but the former was as out spokenly teleological as the latter was mechanical.
2. The peculiarly involved position of the Stoics, in the de
of metaphysical and physical questions, resulted from the union of different elements. In the foreground stands the ethical need of deducing from a most general metaphysical prin ciple the content of individual morality which could no longer find its roots in state and nationality as in the period of Grecian great ness, and therefore of so shaping the conception of this principle as to make this deduction possible. But, in opposition to this, stood, as an inheritance from Cynicism, the decided disinclination to regard this principle as a transcendent, supersensuous, and incorporeal prin ciple, out of the world of experience. All the more decisive was the
force with which the thoughts suggested in the Peripatetic philos ophy of Nature came forward, in which the attempt was made to understand the world as a living being, in purposive motion of itself. For all these motives, the logos doctrine of Heraclitus seemed to present itself as in like measure a solution of the problem, and this became, therefore, the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. 1
The fundamental view of the Stoics is, then, that the entire uni verse forms a single, unitary, living, connected whole, and that all particular things are the determinate forms assumed by a divine primitive power which is in a state of eternal activity. Their doc trine is in its fundamental principles pantheism, and (in opposition to Aristotle) conscious pantheism. The immediate consequence of
however, the energetic effort to overcome the Platonic-Aris totelian dualism,1 and remove the opposition between sensuous and supersensuous, between natural necessity and reason acting accord ing to ends, between Matter and Form. The Stoa attempts this through simple identification of those conceptions whose opposing characters, to be sure, cannot by this means be put out of the world.
Hence declares the divine World-being to be the primitive power in which are contained in like measure the conditioning laws and the purposeful determination of all things and of all cosmic processes, —the World-ground and the World-mind. As actively productive and formative power, the deity the Aoyot cnrtp/xariKos,
Cf. H. Siebeck, Die Umbildung der peripatetischen Xaturphilosophie in die der Stoiker Unten. x. Philosophit der Griechen, Aufl. , pp. 181 ff. ).
We wpre obliged to conceive of the relation of Aristotle to Plato in similar manner 13, 1-4), just in this point the Stoic philosophy of Nature shows farther development in the same direction which the Peripatetic take* in Strato.
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CuAr. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Stoic*. 181
the vital principle, which unfolds itself in the multitude of phenom
ena as their peculiar, particular Kayo* o-wtpuariKoi or formative forces. In this organic function, God however, also the purposefully creating and guiding Reason, and thus with regard to all particular processes the all-ruling Providence (VpoVow). The determination of the particular by the universe (which constitutes the dominant fundamental conviction of the Stoics) a completely purposeful and rational order,1 and forms as such the highest norm (vouoi), according to which all individual beings should direct themselves in the development of their activity. '
Bat this all-determining " law " for the Stoics, as was for Heraclitus, likewise the all-compelling power which, as inviolable necessity ((WyitTj), and so, as inevitable destiny (tluapuivrj, fatum), brings forth every particular phenomenon in the unalterable succes sion of causes and effects. Nothing takes place in the world with out a preceding cause (curia a-poir/ov/tcn;), and just by virtue of this complete causal determination of every particular does the universe
possess its character of purposeful, connected whole. * Hence Chrysippus combated in the most emphatic manner the conception of chance, and taught that apparent causelessness in a particular event could mean only kind of causation hidden from human insight4 In this assumption of natural necessity, admitting of no exceptions even for the most particular and the least important occurrence, — conviction which naturally found expression also in the form that the divine providence extends even to the smallest events of life,* — the Stoic school agrees even verbally with Democ- ntus, and the only school in antiquity which carried this most valuable thought of the great Abderite through all branches of theoretical science.
In all other respects, indeed, the Stoics stand in opposition to Dnoocritus and in closer relation to Aristotle. For while in the Atomistic system the natural necessity of all that comes to pass results from the motive impulses of individual things, with the Stoics flows immediately from the living activity of the whole, and
A» the Platonic Timteus had already taught, 11, 10.
The normative character in the conception of the lngo» appeared clearly even
with HeraclitiM p. «3, note 6).
Plut. De F-Ho. 11, 574. lb. 572.
Platarch make* Chrysippus say Contm. Not. 84, 1076) that not even the
•riaeji thins can sustain any other relation than that which accords with the 4fo**of Zeus. Ct. Cic. De . Vat. Denr. II. 65, lft4. Only the circumstance tfiat the 8toa limited the immediate action of the divine providence to the pur- snaefol determination of the whole, and derived from thin that of the particular, explains *ach modes of expression as the well-known Magna dii eurant, parca
•sflifmmt.
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182 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Pabt IL
as over against the reduction of all qualities to quantitative differ ences, they held fast to the reality of properties as the peculiar
forces of individual things, and to qualitative alteration
in opposition to motion in space). They directed their polemic particularly against the purely mechanical explanation of natural processes by pressure and impact ; but in carrying out their teleology. they sank from the great conception of Aristotle, who had every where emphasised the immanent purposiveness of the formations in which the Forms were realised, to the consideration of the benefits which flow from the phenomena of Nature to meet the needs of beings endowed with reason, " of gods and men. " ' In particular, they exaggerated, even to ridiculous Philistinism, the demonstration of the manner in which heaven and earth and all that in them is, are arranged with such magnificent adaptation for man*
3. In all these theoretical views, and just in these, the Epicurean* are diametrically opposed to the Stoics. With the Epicureans, em ployment with metaphysical and physical problems had in general only the negative purpose* of setting aside the religio-os ideas through which the quiet self-enjoyment of the wise man might be disturbed. Hence it was the chief concern of Epicurus to exclude from the explanation of Nature every element that would allow a government of the world, guided by universal ends, to appear as even possible ; hence, on the other hand, the Epicureau view of the world was absolutely lacking in a positive principle. This explains the fact that Epicurus, at least, had only a sceptical shrug of the shoulders for all questions of natural science from which no practical advantage was to be gained ; and though many of his later disciples seem to have been less limited, and to have thought more scien tifically, the ruts of the school's opinion were worn too deep to allow the attainment of essentially broader aims. The more the teleological conception of Nature formed, in the course of time, the common ground on which Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic doctrines met in syncretistic blending, the more Epicureanism insisted upon its isolated standpoint of negation ; theoretically, it was essentially anti-teleological, and in this respect brought forth nothing positive.
It was successful only in combating the anthropological excres cences to which the teleological view of the world led, especially
* If one might trust Xenophon's Memorabilia, the Stoics had in this no leas a man than Socrates as their predecessor; yet it seems that even in this account, which is tinctured with Cynicism if not worked over from the Stoic point of view (Krohn), the general faith of Socrates in a purposeful guiding of the world by divine providence has descended into the petty. Cf. J 8, 8.
• Diog. Laert. X. 143 ; Us. p. 74.
(aA. VotW. c
1 Cic. Dt Fin. III. 20, 67 ; De Xat. Deor. II. 53 ft".
Ckat. 1, S 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology: Epicurean*. 183
with the Stoics,1 — a task which was undoubtedly not so very diffi cult, — but to create from principles a counter-theory it was not pre pared. Epicurus, indeed, availed himself for this purpose of the external data of the materialistic metaphysics, as he was able to receive them from Democritus ; but he was far from attaining the Utters scientific height. He could follow the great Atomist c nly so far as to believe that he himself also, for explaining the world, needed nothing more than empty space and the corporeal particles moving within countless in number, infinitely varied in form and size, and indivisible and to their motion, impact, and pressure he
traced all cosmic processes, and all things and systems of things (worlds) which arise and again perish, thereby seeking to deduce all qualitative differences from these purely quantitative relations. * He accepted, accordingly, the purely mechanical conception of nat ural processes, but denied expressly their unconditioned and excep
tionless necessity. The doctrine of Democritus, therefore,
over to the Epicureans only in so far as was Atomism and mechan ism with regard to the much deeper and more valuable principle of the universal reign of law in Nature, his legacy, as we have seen above, passed to the Stoics.
Meanwhile, just this peculiar relation most intimately con nected with the Epicurean ethics and with the decisive influence which that exercised upon their physics indeed, one may say that the individualising tendency taken by the ethical reflection of the post-Aristotelian age found its most adequate metaphysics just in the doctrine of Epicurus. To morals, which had for its essential content the independence of the individual and his withdrawal upon himself, view of the world must have been welcome which regarded the prime constituents of reality as completely independ ent, both of each other and of single force, and regarded their activity as determined solely by themselves. ' Now the doctrine of
Democritus which taught the inevitable, natural necessity of all that comes to pass, contains unmistakably (Heraclitic) element which removes this autonomy of individual things, and just to their adoption of this element did the Stoics owe the fact (cf. 14, that their ethics outgrew the one-sided Cynic presuppositions with which they started. It all the more comprehensible that Epi-
let just this element fall away and his conception of the
CI especially Lucret. Dt Rer. JVal. 1021 V. 160 Dlog. Laert. X. B7. S*xt. femp. Adv. Math. X. 42.
Thtu Kpicuro* grounded hia deviation from Remocritua's explanation of the
world by an appeal to buman freedom of the will. Cf. 10, and also the citav
m ZeUer 1V. « 408, [Eng. tr. Stoic*, etc. ,
440].
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184 Hellenistic-Roman Thought . Ethical Period. [Part n.
world as contrasted with that of the Stoa is characterised precisely by this, that while the latter regarded every individual as deter mined by the whole, he rather regarded the whole as a product of originally existing and likewise originally functioning individual things. His doctrine is in every respect consistent Atomism.
Thus the system of Democritus had the misfortune to be propa gated for traditions of antiquity, and so also for those of the Middle Ages, in a system which indeed retained his Atomistic view, looking in the direction of the exclusive reality of quantitative relations and of the mechanical conception of the cosmic processes, but set aside his thought of Nature as a connected whole, regulated by law.
4. Following this latter direction, Epicurus gave a new form to the doctrine of the origin of the world maintained by Atomism. 1 In contrast with what had been already seen, perhaps by the Pythagoreans, but, at all events, by Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, that in space in itself there is no other direction than that from the centre toward the periphery, and the reverse, he appeals to the declaration of the senses,' — agreeably to his doctrine of knowl edge, — according to which there is an absolute up and down, and maintains that the atoms were all originally in motion from above downward by virtue of their weight. But, in order to derive the origination of atom groups from this universal rain of atoms, he assumed that some of them had voluntarily deviated from the direct line of fall. From this deviation were explained the impacts, the grouping of atoms, and, ultimately, the whirling motions which lead to the formation of worlds, and which the old Atomism had derived from the meeting of atoms which were moving about in an unordered manner. *
It is noteworthy, however, that after he had in this way spoiled the inner coherence of the doctrine of Democritus, Epicurus re nounced the voluntary choice of the atoms as a means for the further explanation of the individual processes of Nature, and from the point when the whirling motion of the atom-complexes seemed to him to be explained, allowed only the principle of mechanical
1 Ps. -Plut. Fiac. I. 3 ; Dox. D. 285 ; Cic. Dt Fin. I. 6, 17 ; Guyau, Morale d'Epic. 74.
4 Diog. Laert. X. 60.
* Cf. § 4, 9. It seems that later Epicureans who held fast to the sensuous basis of this idea and yet would exclude the voluntary action of the atoms and carry out more thoroughly the Democritic thought of Nature's conformity to law, hit upon the plan of explaining the grouping (ASpotaiUt) of the ''atoms on the hypothesis that the more massive fell faster in empty space than the lighter "; at least, Lucretius combats such theories (De Her. Nat. II. 226 ft. ). \-
Chap. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Epicurean*. 185
necessity to stand. ' He used, therefore, the voluntary self-determi nation of the atoms only as a principle to explain the beginning of a whirling motion which afterwards went on purely mechanically. He used it, therefore, just as Anaxagoras used his force-matter, vov*
For upon this metaphysical substructure Epicurus erected a physical theory which acknowledged only the mechanics of atoms as explanation for all phenomena of Nature without any exception, and carried this out, for organisms especially, by employ ing for the explanation of their purposive formation the Empedo- clean thought of the survival of the fit.
Lastly, the Democritic principle of natural necessity asserts itself in the system of Epicurus in his assumption that in the continuous arising and perishing of the worlds which become formed by the assemblages of atoms, every possible combination, and thus every form of world-construction, must ultimately repeat itself. This was proved in a manner which would now be put upon the basis of the theory of probabilities, and the result of this repetition was held to be, that considering the infinitude of time, nothing can happen which has not already existed in the same way. * In this doctrine, again, Epicurus agrees with the Stoics, who taught a plu rality of worlds, not co-existent, but following one another in time,
and yet found themselves forced to maintain that these must be always completely alike, even to the last detail of particular forma tion and particular events. As the world proceeds forth from the divine primitive fire, so it is each time taken back again into the tame after a predetermined period : and then when after the world- conflagration the primitive power begins the construction of a new world, this +vn* (Nature), which remains eternally the same, unfolds itself again and again in the same manner, in correspondence with its own rationality and necessity. This return of all things (voXiy- ytrwim. or 4»o«caTo<rra<m) appears, accordingly, as a necessary con sequence of the two alternative conceptions of the Stoics, Aoyoc and
5. The theoretical ideas of these two main schools of later an tiquity are accordingly at one only in being completely material
1 Hence In a certain sense it might be said, from the standpoint of present T.
bciio, that the difference between Democritus and Epicurus wan only a rela- 'jie «ne. The former regards as an unexplained primitive fact the direction which each atom has from the beginning, the latter regards as an unexplained pr-mitire fact a voluntary deviation, taking place at some point of time, from a direction of fall which is uniform for all. The essential difference, however, is (hat with Democritus this primitive fact is something timeless, while with Epicaroa it la a tingle voluntary act occurring in time, an act which is expressly cnaapared with the causeless self-determination of the human will (cf. § 16).
(ct p. 62).
« Rut. in Euaeb. Oox. V. 581, 19 ; Us. fr. 200.
186 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
istic, and it was just in opposition to Plato and Aristotle that they expressly emphasised this position of theirs. Both maintain that the real (ra oWa), because it manifests itself in action and passion (irottlv xal iracrxiiv), can be only corporeal ; the Epicureans declared only empty space to be incorporeal. On the contrary, they combated the (Platonic) view that the properties of bodies are something incorporeal per. se {naff couto),1 and the Stoics even went so far as to declare that even the qualities, forces, and rela tions of things, which present themselves in changing modes in connection with things and yet as actual or real, are " bodies," * and with a mode of thought which reminds us of the coming and going of the homoiomeriae with Anaxagoras,8 they regarded the presence and change of properties in things as a kind of inter mixture of these bodies with others, a view from which resulted the theory of the universal mingling and reciprocal interpenetration of all bodies (xpao'it Si' oAwv).
In carrying out the materialistic theory the Epicureans produced scarcely anything new ; on the contrary, the Stoic doctrine of Nature shows a number of new views, which are interesting not only in themselves, but also as having marked out the essential lines for the idea of the world held during the following centuries.
First of all, in the Stoic system the two antitheses, which were to be removed or identified in the conception of Nature as one, again part company. The divine primitive essence divides into the active and the passive, into force and matter. As force, the deity is fire or warm, vital breath, pneuma ; as matter, it changes itself out of moist vapour (air) partly into water, partly into earth. Thus fire is the soul, and the " moist " is the body, of the World-god ; and yet the two form a single being, identical within itself. While the Stoics thus attach themselves, in their doctrine of the transmuta tion and re-transmutation of substances, to Heraclitus, and in their characterisation of the four elements principally to Aristotle, and follow Aristotle also in the main in their exposition of the world- structure and of the purposive system of its movements, the most important thing in their physics is doubtless the doctrine of the pneuma.
God as creative reason (kayo* mrcp/iaTiicos) is this warm vital breath, the formative fire-mind which penetrates all things and is
1 Diog. Laert. X. 67.
• Plut. C. Not. 50, 1085.
* A similar materialising of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas (Plat. Phcedo, 102),
which reminds us of Anaxagoras, was apparently worked out by F. udoxos, who belonged to the Academv (p. 103). Arist. Met. I. 9, 901 a 17, and also Alex. Aphr. Schol. in Arist. 573 a 12.
Chap. 1, $ 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology: Epicurean*, Stoics. 187
dominant in them as their active principle; he is the universe regarded as an animate being, spontaneously in motion within itself, and purposefully and regularly developed. All this is comprehended by the Stoics in the conception of the xv<vpx,' an extraordinarily condensed conception, full of relations, — an idea in which suggestions from Heraclitus (kayos), Anaxagoras (vow),
Diogenes of Apollonia (itjp), Democritus (fire-atoms), and not least the Peripatetic natural philosophy and physiology, became intri cately combined. *
6. The most effective element in this combination proved to be the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, universe and man, which the Stoics adopted from Aristotle. The individual soul, also, the vital force of the body, which holds together and rules the flesh, is fiery breath, pneuma; but all the individual forces which are active in the members and control their purposive functions, are also such vital minds or spirits {spiritus animates). In the human and the animal organism the activity of the pneuma appears con
nected with the blood and its circulation ; nevertheless, the pneuma itself — just because it is also a body, said Chrysippus* — is sep arable in detail from the lower elements which it animates, and this separation takes place in death.
At the same time, however, the individual soul, as it is only a part of the universal World-soul, is completely determined in its nature and its activity by this World-soul ; it is consubstantial with the divine Pneuma and dependent upon it. Just for this reason the World-reason, the Xoyot, is for the soul the highest law (cf. above, § 14, 3). The soul's independence is therefore only one that is limited by time, and in any case it is its ultimate destiny to be taken back into the divine All-mind at the universal conflagration of the world. With regard to the continuance of this independence, i-e. as to the extent of individual immortality, various views were current in the school; some recognised the duration of all souls until the time of the universal conflagration, others reserved this for the wise only.
As now the one Pneuma of the universe (whose seat was located by the Stoics sometimes in heaven, sometimes in the sun, sometimes in the midst of the world) pours itself forth into all things as animating force, so the ruling part of the individual soul (t6 ^y«f">-
niror Aoyurjuk) in which dwell ideas, judgments, and impulses, and
• Slob. Bel. I. 374. Dox. D. 463, 18: «J«u t4 it rwC^a 'troSr 'airro rpit 4»»t» *ai it tirrti, if thCus iavri ttroiw wpirtt (a! irtru «t\.
• Cf. H. Riebeck Zttttrk. f. Vfilkerptychologie, 1881, pp. 304 fl. • SMBcaiaa, Dt Xat. Horn. p. 34.
188 Hellenistic-Roman Thought ; Ethical Period. [Pari II.
as whose seat the heart was assumed, was regarded as extending its particular ramifications throughout the whole body, like the "arms of a polyp. " Of such particular "pneuraata" the Stoa assumed seven, — the five senses, the faculty of speech, and the reproductive power. As the unity of the divine Primitive Being dwells in the universe, so the individual personality lives in the body.
It is characteristic that the Epicureans could entirely -adopt this external apparatus of psychological views. For them, too, the soul — which according to Democritus consists of the finest atoms — is a fiery, atmospheric breath (they apply likewise the term "pneuma"); but they see in this breath something that is intro duced into the body from without, something held fast by the body and mechanically connected with which in death forthwith scattered. They also distinguish between the rational and the irrational part of the soul, without, however, being able to attribute to the former the metaphysical dignity which acquired in the Stoic theory. Here, too, their doctrine on the whole, insufficient and dependent.
In accordance with the pantheistic presupposition of the system, the metaphysics and physics of the Stoics form also theology, system of natural religion based on scientific demonstra tion, and this found also poetic presentations in the school, such as the hymn of Cleanthes. Epicureanism, on the contrary, is in its whole nature anti-religious. It takes throughout the standpoint of " Enlightenment," that religion has been overcome by science, and that the task and triumph of wisdom to put aside the phantoms of superstition which have grown out of fear and ignorance. The poet of this school depicts in grotesque outlines the evils which religion brought on man, and sings the glory of their conquest by scientific knowledge. 1 It all the more amusing that the Epicurean theory itself fell to depicting mythology of its own which re garded as harmless. It believed that certain degree of truth must attach to the universal faith in gods,1 but found that this correct idea was disfigured by false assumptions. These sought in the myths which feigned participation of the gods in human life, and an interference on their part in the course of things even the Stoics' belief in Providence appeared to them in this respect as but a refined illusion. Epicurus, therefore, — following Democritus in his doctrine of the eidola, or images 10, 4), — saw in the gods giant forms resembling men, who lead blessed life of contemplation and spiritual intercourse in the intermediate spaces between the
Lucret. De Rer. Nat. 62 ff. Diog. Laert. X. 123 U§. 60
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Ckap. 1, { Id. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Epicureans, Stoics. 189
worlds (intermundia), undisturbed by the change of events, and unconcerned as to the destiny of lower beings ; and thus this doc trine, also, is fundamentally only the attempt of Epicureanism to put in mythological form its ideal of aesthetic self-enjoyment.
8. It was in an entirely different way that the ideas of the popular religion were fitted into the Stoic metaphysics. Whereas,
up to this time in the development of Greek thought philosoph ical theology had separated itself farther and farther from the indigenous mythology, we meet here, for the first time, the systematic attempt to bring natural and positive religion into harmony. Accordingly, when the Stoics, also, yielded to the need of recognising the warrant of ideas universally present throughout the human race (cf. § 17, 4), their pneuma doctrine offered them not only a welcome instrument, but suggestions that were determinative.
For consideration of the universe must teach them that the divine World-power has evidently taken on mightier forms and those of more vigorous life than individual human souls; and so, beside the one deity without beginning and end, which for the most part they
designated as Zeus, a great number of "gods that had come into exist- t*re," made their appearance. To these the Stoics, as Plato and Aristotle had already done, reckoned first of all the stars, which
they too honoured as higher intelligences and especially pure for mations of the primitive fire, and further, the personifications of other natural forces in which the power of Providence, benevolent to man, reveals itself. From this point of view we can understand bow an extensive interpretation of myths was the order of the day in the Stoic school, seeking to incorporate the popular figures in its Metaphysical system by all kinds of allegories. In addition to this there was an equally welcome use of the Euemeristic theory, which not only explained and justified the deification of prominent men, but taught also to consider the demons sacred, as the guardian iflints of individual men.
Thus the Stoic world became peopled with a whole host of higher tad lower gods, bnt they all appeared as ultimately but emanations of the one highest World-power, — as the subordinate powers or forces
which, themselves determined by the universal Pneuma, were con ceived of as the ruling spirits of the world's life. They formed, therefore, for the faith of the Stoics, the mediating organs, which
represent, each in its realm, the vital force and Providence of the World-reason, and to them the piety of the Stoics turned in the forms of worship of positive religion. The polytheism of the popular faith was thus philosophically re-established, and taken up as an lolegraat constituent into metaphysical pantheism.
190 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
In connection with this scientific reconstruction of positive re ligion stands the theoretical justification of divination in the Stoic system where it awakened great interest, except in the case of a few men like Panaetius, who thought more coolly. The interconnection and providentially governed unity of the world's processes was held to show itself — as one form of manifestation — in the possibility that different things and processes which stand in no direct causal rela tion to one another, may yet point to one another by delicate rela tions, and therefore be able to serve as signs for one another. The human soul is capable of understanding these by virtue of its rela tionship with the all-ruling Pneuma, but for the full interpretation of such ecstatic revelations the art and science of divination, resting upon experience, must be added. On this basis Stoicism regarded itself as strong enough to elaborate philosophically all the divination of the ancient world. This was especially true of its younger repre sentatives, and in particular, as it seems, of Posidonius.
§ 16. The Freedom of the Will and the Perfection of the World.
The sharp definition of the contrasted mechanical and teleological views of the world, and especially the difference in the conceptional forms in which the thought, common to a certain extent, of Nature's universal conformity to law had been developed, led, in connection with the ethical postulates and presuppositions which controlled the thought of the time, to two new problems, which from the beginning had various complications. These were the problems of the freedom of the human will and of the goodness and perfection of the world. Both problems grew out of contradictions which made their appearance between moral needs and just those meta physical theories which had been formed to satisfy those needs.
1. The proper home for the formation of these new problems was the Stoic system, and they may be understood as the necessary consequence of a deep and ultimately irreconcilable antagonism be tween the fundamental principles of the system. These principles are metaphysical monism and ethical dualism. The fundamental moral doctrine of the Stoics, according to which man should overcome the world in his own impulses by virtue, presupposes an anthropological duality, an opposition in human nature in accordance with which reason stands over against a sensuous nature contrary to reason. Without this antithesis the whole Stoic ethics is ready to fall. The metaphysical doctrine, however, by which the command of reason in man is to be explained, postulates such an unrestricted and all
Chaf. 1, J 1<J. ] Freedom of the Will : Socrates, Aristotle. 191
controlling reality of the World-reason that the reality of what is contrary to reason, either in man or in the course of the world, cannot be united therewith. From this source grew the two ques tions which since then have never ceased to employ man's critical investigation, although all essential points of view that can come into consideration in the case were more or less clearly illumined at that time.
2. The conceptions which form the presuppositions for the prob lem offreedom lie ready at hand in the ethical reflections ou the voluntary nature of wrongdoing, which were begun by Socrates and brought to a preliminary conclusion by Aristotle in a brilliant investigation. 1 The motives of these thoughts are ethical through out, and the domain in which they move is exclusively psychologi cal. The question at issue is hence essentially that of freedom of choice, and while the reality of this is doubtless affirmed upon the
basis of immediate feeling, and with reference to man's conscious ness of his responsibility, difficulty arises only in consequence of the intellectualistic conception of Socrates, who brought the will into complete dependence upon insight. This difficulty develops primarily in the double meaning of " freedom," or, as it is here still called, " voluntariness " (Uownov), an ambiguity which has since been repeated again and again in the most variously shifted forms. According to Socrates, all ethically wrong action proceeds from a wrong view — a view clouded by desires. He who thus acts does not " know," therefore, what he is doing, and in this sense he acts
involuntarily. ' That is, only the wise man is free ; the wicked is n»t free. 1 From this ethical conception of freedom, however, the /tfchological conception of freedom —i. e. the conception of freedom of choice as the ability to decide between different motives — must be carefully separated. Whether Socrates did this is a question ; ' at all events, it was done by Plato. The latter expressly affirmed man's freedom of choice,' appealing to his responsibility, — a psycho logical decision on essentially ethical grounds, — and, at the same time, he held fast to the Soc ratio doctrine that the wicked man acts involuntarily, i. e. is ethically not free. He even connects the two directly when he develops the thought * that man may sink into the
' BtK . Vfc. III. 1-8.
< Xen Mem. III. 9, 4 ; Cyrop. HI. 1, 38.
• Ct Art*. Etk. Sic. III. 7, 113 b 14.
* According to a remark in the Peripatetic Magna Moralia (I. 9, 1187 a 7)
Vicrate*. indeed, had expressly said, " it is not in our power" to be good or bad According to thla, therefore, he had denied pgycholoKical freedom.
* Flat. Hep. X. 617 ff. • Pfau. Ftued. 81 B.
i92 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Ethical Period. [Part IL
condition of ethical non-freedom by his own fault, and, therefore,
with psychological freedom.
With Aristotle, who separated himself farther from the Socratic
intellectualism, the psychological conception of freedom comes out more clearly and independently. He proceeds from the position that ethical qualification in general is applicable only in the case of " voluntary " actions, and discusses in the first place the prejudices which this voluntariness sustains, partly from external force (/? »? ) and psychical compulsion, and partly from ignorance of the matter. That action only is completely voluntary which has its origin in the personality itself, and of which the relations are fully known. 1 The whole investigation ' is maintained from the standpoint of responsi bility, and the discovered conception of voluntariness is designed to lead to the conception of accountability. It contains within itself the characteristics of external freedom of action, and of a conception of the situation unclouded by any deception. But, on this account, it must be still further restricted, for among his voluntary acts a man can be held accountable for those only that proceed from a choice (wpoaiptfris). 3 Freedom of choice, therefore, which proceeds by reflecting upon ends as well as upon means, is the condition of ethical accountability.
Aristotle avoided a farther entrance upon the psychology of motivation and upon the determining causes of this choice ; he con tents himself with establishing the position that the personality itself is the sufficient reason for the actions * which are ascribed to it ; and to this maintenance of the freedom of choice his school, and
especially Theophrastus, freedom, held fast.
who composed a treatise of his own on
3. On this same basis we find also the Stoics, in so far as purely ethical considerations are concerned. Precisely that lively feeling of responsibility which characterises their morals demanded of them the recognition of this free choice on the part of the individual, and they sought therefore to maintain this in every way.
Their position became critical, however, by reason of the fact that their metaphysics, with its doctrine of fate and providence, drove them beyond this attitude. For since this theory of fate made man, like all other creatures, determined in all his external and internal formation and in all that he does and suffers, by the
1 Kth. Nic. III.
In this respect we notice first that the Peripatetic School, during the first generations, made a noteworthy change in the principles for explaining Nature which it had received from its master.
1. The beginning of this is found already with Theophrastus, who doubtless defended all the main doctrines of Aristotelianism, espe cially against the Stoics, but yet in part went his own ways. The extant fragment of his metaphysics discusses, among the aporiae, principally such difficulties as were contained in the Aristotelian conceptions of the relation of the world to the deity. The Stagi- rite had conceived of Nature (<£wn«) as a being in itself alive
(£<uov), and yet had. conceived of its entire motion as a (teleological) effect of the divine Reason ; God, as pure Form, was separated from the world, transcendent ; and yet, as animating, first-moving power, he was immanent in it. This chief metaphysical problem of the following period was seen by Theophrastus, though his own attitude toward it remained fixed by the bounds of Aristotle's doctrine. On the other hand, he shows a more definite tendency in the closely connected question regarding the relation of reason to the lower psychical activities. The vovs was regarded, on the one hand (con sidered as Form of the animal soul), as immanent, inborn; on the other hand, in its purity, as different in essence, and as having come
Chat. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Peripatetics. 179
into the individual soul from without. Here now Theophrastus decided absolutely against transcendence; he subsumed the vofc also as a self-developing activity, under the concept of a cosmic process,1 of motion (mnprtc), and set it beside the animal soul as something different, not in kind, but in degree only.
Strato proceeded still more energetically in the same direction. He removed completely the limits between reason and the lower activities of ideation. Both, he taught, form an inseparable unity ; there is no thought without perceptions, and just as little is there sense-perception without the co-operation of thought ; both together belong to the unitary consciousness, which he, with the Stoics, calls ro iyifunnxov (cf. § 14, 3). But Strato applied the same thought, which he carried out psychologically, to the analogous metaphysical relation also. The yycpwucov of the dtiovt, also, the Reason of Nature, cannot be regarded as something separated from her. Whether now this may be expressed in the form that Strato did not think the hypothesis of the deity necessary for the explanation of Nature and its phenomena, or in the form that he postulated Nature itself as God, but denied it not only external resemblance to man, but even consciousness,* — in any case, Stratonism, regarded from the stand point of Aristotle's teaching, forms a one-sidedly naturalistic or pantheistic modification. He denies spiritual monotheism, the con ception of the transcendence of God, and by teaching that a pure Form is as unthinkable as mere matter, he pushes the Platonic element in the Aristotelian metaphysics, which had remained just in the thought of the separation {\iapurnot) of reason from matter, so far into the background that the element derived from Democ- hroi becomes again entirely free. Strato sees in what takes place in the world, only an immanent necessity of Nature, and no longer the working of a spiritual, extramundane cause.
Yet this naturalism remains still in dependence upon Aristotle, in to far as it seeks the natural causes of the cosmic processes, not in the atoms and their quantitative determinations, but expressly in the original qualities {irworrjm) and powers (Swo^tw) of things. If among these it emphasised especially warmth and cold, this was quite in the spirit of the dynamic conceptions held by the older Hjlozoism, and to this, also, Strato seems most nearly related in his undecided, intermediate position between mechanical and teleological explanation of the world. Just for this' reason, however, this side- development ran its course with Strato himself without further remit, for it was already outrun at the beginning by the Stoic and
1 Stepl. Phgs. 226 a. * Cic. Acad. II. 38, 121 ; Dt Nat. Dtor. I. 13, 36.
180 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Ethical Period. [Pakt II.
the Epicurean physics. These both defended also the standpoint of the immanent explanation of Nature, but the former was as out spokenly teleological as the latter was mechanical.
2. The peculiarly involved position of the Stoics, in the de
of metaphysical and physical questions, resulted from the union of different elements. In the foreground stands the ethical need of deducing from a most general metaphysical prin ciple the content of individual morality which could no longer find its roots in state and nationality as in the period of Grecian great ness, and therefore of so shaping the conception of this principle as to make this deduction possible. But, in opposition to this, stood, as an inheritance from Cynicism, the decided disinclination to regard this principle as a transcendent, supersensuous, and incorporeal prin ciple, out of the world of experience. All the more decisive was the
force with which the thoughts suggested in the Peripatetic philos ophy of Nature came forward, in which the attempt was made to understand the world as a living being, in purposive motion of itself. For all these motives, the logos doctrine of Heraclitus seemed to present itself as in like measure a solution of the problem, and this became, therefore, the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. 1
The fundamental view of the Stoics is, then, that the entire uni verse forms a single, unitary, living, connected whole, and that all particular things are the determinate forms assumed by a divine primitive power which is in a state of eternal activity. Their doc trine is in its fundamental principles pantheism, and (in opposition to Aristotle) conscious pantheism. The immediate consequence of
however, the energetic effort to overcome the Platonic-Aris totelian dualism,1 and remove the opposition between sensuous and supersensuous, between natural necessity and reason acting accord ing to ends, between Matter and Form. The Stoa attempts this through simple identification of those conceptions whose opposing characters, to be sure, cannot by this means be put out of the world.
Hence declares the divine World-being to be the primitive power in which are contained in like measure the conditioning laws and the purposeful determination of all things and of all cosmic processes, —the World-ground and the World-mind. As actively productive and formative power, the deity the Aoyot cnrtp/xariKos,
Cf. H. Siebeck, Die Umbildung der peripatetischen Xaturphilosophie in die der Stoiker Unten. x. Philosophit der Griechen, Aufl. , pp. 181 ff. ).
We wpre obliged to conceive of the relation of Aristotle to Plato in similar manner 13, 1-4), just in this point the Stoic philosophy of Nature shows farther development in the same direction which the Peripatetic take* in Strato.
partment
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CuAr. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Stoic*. 181
the vital principle, which unfolds itself in the multitude of phenom
ena as their peculiar, particular Kayo* o-wtpuariKoi or formative forces. In this organic function, God however, also the purposefully creating and guiding Reason, and thus with regard to all particular processes the all-ruling Providence (VpoVow). The determination of the particular by the universe (which constitutes the dominant fundamental conviction of the Stoics) a completely purposeful and rational order,1 and forms as such the highest norm (vouoi), according to which all individual beings should direct themselves in the development of their activity. '
Bat this all-determining " law " for the Stoics, as was for Heraclitus, likewise the all-compelling power which, as inviolable necessity ((WyitTj), and so, as inevitable destiny (tluapuivrj, fatum), brings forth every particular phenomenon in the unalterable succes sion of causes and effects. Nothing takes place in the world with out a preceding cause (curia a-poir/ov/tcn;), and just by virtue of this complete causal determination of every particular does the universe
possess its character of purposeful, connected whole. * Hence Chrysippus combated in the most emphatic manner the conception of chance, and taught that apparent causelessness in a particular event could mean only kind of causation hidden from human insight4 In this assumption of natural necessity, admitting of no exceptions even for the most particular and the least important occurrence, — conviction which naturally found expression also in the form that the divine providence extends even to the smallest events of life,* — the Stoic school agrees even verbally with Democ- ntus, and the only school in antiquity which carried this most valuable thought of the great Abderite through all branches of theoretical science.
In all other respects, indeed, the Stoics stand in opposition to Dnoocritus and in closer relation to Aristotle. For while in the Atomistic system the natural necessity of all that comes to pass results from the motive impulses of individual things, with the Stoics flows immediately from the living activity of the whole, and
A» the Platonic Timteus had already taught, 11, 10.
The normative character in the conception of the lngo» appeared clearly even
with HeraclitiM p. «3, note 6).
Plut. De F-Ho. 11, 574. lb. 572.
Platarch make* Chrysippus say Contm. Not. 84, 1076) that not even the
•riaeji thins can sustain any other relation than that which accords with the 4fo**of Zeus. Ct. Cic. De . Vat. Denr. II. 65, lft4. Only the circumstance tfiat the 8toa limited the immediate action of the divine providence to the pur- snaefol determination of the whole, and derived from thin that of the particular, explains *ach modes of expression as the well-known Magna dii eurant, parca
•sflifmmt.
Ct. 114. 4
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182 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Pabt IL
as over against the reduction of all qualities to quantitative differ ences, they held fast to the reality of properties as the peculiar
forces of individual things, and to qualitative alteration
in opposition to motion in space). They directed their polemic particularly against the purely mechanical explanation of natural processes by pressure and impact ; but in carrying out their teleology. they sank from the great conception of Aristotle, who had every where emphasised the immanent purposiveness of the formations in which the Forms were realised, to the consideration of the benefits which flow from the phenomena of Nature to meet the needs of beings endowed with reason, " of gods and men. " ' In particular, they exaggerated, even to ridiculous Philistinism, the demonstration of the manner in which heaven and earth and all that in them is, are arranged with such magnificent adaptation for man*
3. In all these theoretical views, and just in these, the Epicurean* are diametrically opposed to the Stoics. With the Epicureans, em ployment with metaphysical and physical problems had in general only the negative purpose* of setting aside the religio-os ideas through which the quiet self-enjoyment of the wise man might be disturbed. Hence it was the chief concern of Epicurus to exclude from the explanation of Nature every element that would allow a government of the world, guided by universal ends, to appear as even possible ; hence, on the other hand, the Epicureau view of the world was absolutely lacking in a positive principle. This explains the fact that Epicurus, at least, had only a sceptical shrug of the shoulders for all questions of natural science from which no practical advantage was to be gained ; and though many of his later disciples seem to have been less limited, and to have thought more scien tifically, the ruts of the school's opinion were worn too deep to allow the attainment of essentially broader aims. The more the teleological conception of Nature formed, in the course of time, the common ground on which Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic doctrines met in syncretistic blending, the more Epicureanism insisted upon its isolated standpoint of negation ; theoretically, it was essentially anti-teleological, and in this respect brought forth nothing positive.
It was successful only in combating the anthropological excres cences to which the teleological view of the world led, especially
* If one might trust Xenophon's Memorabilia, the Stoics had in this no leas a man than Socrates as their predecessor; yet it seems that even in this account, which is tinctured with Cynicism if not worked over from the Stoic point of view (Krohn), the general faith of Socrates in a purposeful guiding of the world by divine providence has descended into the petty. Cf. J 8, 8.
• Diog. Laert. X. 143 ; Us. p. 74.
(aA. VotW. c
1 Cic. Dt Fin. III. 20, 67 ; De Xat. Deor. II. 53 ft".
Ckat. 1, S 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology: Epicurean*. 183
with the Stoics,1 — a task which was undoubtedly not so very diffi cult, — but to create from principles a counter-theory it was not pre pared. Epicurus, indeed, availed himself for this purpose of the external data of the materialistic metaphysics, as he was able to receive them from Democritus ; but he was far from attaining the Utters scientific height. He could follow the great Atomist c nly so far as to believe that he himself also, for explaining the world, needed nothing more than empty space and the corporeal particles moving within countless in number, infinitely varied in form and size, and indivisible and to their motion, impact, and pressure he
traced all cosmic processes, and all things and systems of things (worlds) which arise and again perish, thereby seeking to deduce all qualitative differences from these purely quantitative relations. * He accepted, accordingly, the purely mechanical conception of nat ural processes, but denied expressly their unconditioned and excep
tionless necessity. The doctrine of Democritus, therefore,
over to the Epicureans only in so far as was Atomism and mechan ism with regard to the much deeper and more valuable principle of the universal reign of law in Nature, his legacy, as we have seen above, passed to the Stoics.
Meanwhile, just this peculiar relation most intimately con nected with the Epicurean ethics and with the decisive influence which that exercised upon their physics indeed, one may say that the individualising tendency taken by the ethical reflection of the post-Aristotelian age found its most adequate metaphysics just in the doctrine of Epicurus. To morals, which had for its essential content the independence of the individual and his withdrawal upon himself, view of the world must have been welcome which regarded the prime constituents of reality as completely independ ent, both of each other and of single force, and regarded their activity as determined solely by themselves. ' Now the doctrine of
Democritus which taught the inevitable, natural necessity of all that comes to pass, contains unmistakably (Heraclitic) element which removes this autonomy of individual things, and just to their adoption of this element did the Stoics owe the fact (cf. 14, that their ethics outgrew the one-sided Cynic presuppositions with which they started. It all the more comprehensible that Epi-
let just this element fall away and his conception of the
CI especially Lucret. Dt Rer. JVal. 1021 V. 160 Dlog. Laert. X. B7. S*xt. femp. Adv. Math. X. 42.
Thtu Kpicuro* grounded hia deviation from Remocritua's explanation of the
world by an appeal to buman freedom of the will. Cf. 10, and also the citav
m ZeUer 1V. « 408, [Eng. tr. Stoic*, etc. ,
440].
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184 Hellenistic-Roman Thought . Ethical Period. [Part n.
world as contrasted with that of the Stoa is characterised precisely by this, that while the latter regarded every individual as deter mined by the whole, he rather regarded the whole as a product of originally existing and likewise originally functioning individual things. His doctrine is in every respect consistent Atomism.
Thus the system of Democritus had the misfortune to be propa gated for traditions of antiquity, and so also for those of the Middle Ages, in a system which indeed retained his Atomistic view, looking in the direction of the exclusive reality of quantitative relations and of the mechanical conception of the cosmic processes, but set aside his thought of Nature as a connected whole, regulated by law.
4. Following this latter direction, Epicurus gave a new form to the doctrine of the origin of the world maintained by Atomism. 1 In contrast with what had been already seen, perhaps by the Pythagoreans, but, at all events, by Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, that in space in itself there is no other direction than that from the centre toward the periphery, and the reverse, he appeals to the declaration of the senses,' — agreeably to his doctrine of knowl edge, — according to which there is an absolute up and down, and maintains that the atoms were all originally in motion from above downward by virtue of their weight. But, in order to derive the origination of atom groups from this universal rain of atoms, he assumed that some of them had voluntarily deviated from the direct line of fall. From this deviation were explained the impacts, the grouping of atoms, and, ultimately, the whirling motions which lead to the formation of worlds, and which the old Atomism had derived from the meeting of atoms which were moving about in an unordered manner. *
It is noteworthy, however, that after he had in this way spoiled the inner coherence of the doctrine of Democritus, Epicurus re nounced the voluntary choice of the atoms as a means for the further explanation of the individual processes of Nature, and from the point when the whirling motion of the atom-complexes seemed to him to be explained, allowed only the principle of mechanical
1 Ps. -Plut. Fiac. I. 3 ; Dox. D. 285 ; Cic. Dt Fin. I. 6, 17 ; Guyau, Morale d'Epic. 74.
4 Diog. Laert. X. 60.
* Cf. § 4, 9. It seems that later Epicureans who held fast to the sensuous basis of this idea and yet would exclude the voluntary action of the atoms and carry out more thoroughly the Democritic thought of Nature's conformity to law, hit upon the plan of explaining the grouping (ASpotaiUt) of the ''atoms on the hypothesis that the more massive fell faster in empty space than the lighter "; at least, Lucretius combats such theories (De Her. Nat. II. 226 ft. ). \-
Chap. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Epicurean*. 185
necessity to stand. ' He used, therefore, the voluntary self-determi nation of the atoms only as a principle to explain the beginning of a whirling motion which afterwards went on purely mechanically. He used it, therefore, just as Anaxagoras used his force-matter, vov*
For upon this metaphysical substructure Epicurus erected a physical theory which acknowledged only the mechanics of atoms as explanation for all phenomena of Nature without any exception, and carried this out, for organisms especially, by employ ing for the explanation of their purposive formation the Empedo- clean thought of the survival of the fit.
Lastly, the Democritic principle of natural necessity asserts itself in the system of Epicurus in his assumption that in the continuous arising and perishing of the worlds which become formed by the assemblages of atoms, every possible combination, and thus every form of world-construction, must ultimately repeat itself. This was proved in a manner which would now be put upon the basis of the theory of probabilities, and the result of this repetition was held to be, that considering the infinitude of time, nothing can happen which has not already existed in the same way. * In this doctrine, again, Epicurus agrees with the Stoics, who taught a plu rality of worlds, not co-existent, but following one another in time,
and yet found themselves forced to maintain that these must be always completely alike, even to the last detail of particular forma tion and particular events. As the world proceeds forth from the divine primitive fire, so it is each time taken back again into the tame after a predetermined period : and then when after the world- conflagration the primitive power begins the construction of a new world, this +vn* (Nature), which remains eternally the same, unfolds itself again and again in the same manner, in correspondence with its own rationality and necessity. This return of all things (voXiy- ytrwim. or 4»o«caTo<rra<m) appears, accordingly, as a necessary con sequence of the two alternative conceptions of the Stoics, Aoyoc and
5. The theoretical ideas of these two main schools of later an tiquity are accordingly at one only in being completely material
1 Hence In a certain sense it might be said, from the standpoint of present T.
bciio, that the difference between Democritus and Epicurus wan only a rela- 'jie «ne. The former regards as an unexplained primitive fact the direction which each atom has from the beginning, the latter regards as an unexplained pr-mitire fact a voluntary deviation, taking place at some point of time, from a direction of fall which is uniform for all. The essential difference, however, is (hat with Democritus this primitive fact is something timeless, while with Epicaroa it la a tingle voluntary act occurring in time, an act which is expressly cnaapared with the causeless self-determination of the human will (cf. § 16).
(ct p. 62).
« Rut. in Euaeb. Oox. V. 581, 19 ; Us. fr. 200.
186 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
istic, and it was just in opposition to Plato and Aristotle that they expressly emphasised this position of theirs. Both maintain that the real (ra oWa), because it manifests itself in action and passion (irottlv xal iracrxiiv), can be only corporeal ; the Epicureans declared only empty space to be incorporeal. On the contrary, they combated the (Platonic) view that the properties of bodies are something incorporeal per. se {naff couto),1 and the Stoics even went so far as to declare that even the qualities, forces, and rela tions of things, which present themselves in changing modes in connection with things and yet as actual or real, are " bodies," * and with a mode of thought which reminds us of the coming and going of the homoiomeriae with Anaxagoras,8 they regarded the presence and change of properties in things as a kind of inter mixture of these bodies with others, a view from which resulted the theory of the universal mingling and reciprocal interpenetration of all bodies (xpao'it Si' oAwv).
In carrying out the materialistic theory the Epicureans produced scarcely anything new ; on the contrary, the Stoic doctrine of Nature shows a number of new views, which are interesting not only in themselves, but also as having marked out the essential lines for the idea of the world held during the following centuries.
First of all, in the Stoic system the two antitheses, which were to be removed or identified in the conception of Nature as one, again part company. The divine primitive essence divides into the active and the passive, into force and matter. As force, the deity is fire or warm, vital breath, pneuma ; as matter, it changes itself out of moist vapour (air) partly into water, partly into earth. Thus fire is the soul, and the " moist " is the body, of the World-god ; and yet the two form a single being, identical within itself. While the Stoics thus attach themselves, in their doctrine of the transmuta tion and re-transmutation of substances, to Heraclitus, and in their characterisation of the four elements principally to Aristotle, and follow Aristotle also in the main in their exposition of the world- structure and of the purposive system of its movements, the most important thing in their physics is doubtless the doctrine of the pneuma.
God as creative reason (kayo* mrcp/iaTiicos) is this warm vital breath, the formative fire-mind which penetrates all things and is
1 Diog. Laert. X. 67.
• Plut. C. Not. 50, 1085.
* A similar materialising of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas (Plat. Phcedo, 102),
which reminds us of Anaxagoras, was apparently worked out by F. udoxos, who belonged to the Academv (p. 103). Arist. Met. I. 9, 901 a 17, and also Alex. Aphr. Schol. in Arist. 573 a 12.
Chap. 1, $ 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology: Epicurean*, Stoics. 187
dominant in them as their active principle; he is the universe regarded as an animate being, spontaneously in motion within itself, and purposefully and regularly developed. All this is comprehended by the Stoics in the conception of the xv<vpx,' an extraordinarily condensed conception, full of relations, — an idea in which suggestions from Heraclitus (kayos), Anaxagoras (vow),
Diogenes of Apollonia (itjp), Democritus (fire-atoms), and not least the Peripatetic natural philosophy and physiology, became intri cately combined. *
6. The most effective element in this combination proved to be the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, universe and man, which the Stoics adopted from Aristotle. The individual soul, also, the vital force of the body, which holds together and rules the flesh, is fiery breath, pneuma; but all the individual forces which are active in the members and control their purposive functions, are also such vital minds or spirits {spiritus animates). In the human and the animal organism the activity of the pneuma appears con
nected with the blood and its circulation ; nevertheless, the pneuma itself — just because it is also a body, said Chrysippus* — is sep arable in detail from the lower elements which it animates, and this separation takes place in death.
At the same time, however, the individual soul, as it is only a part of the universal World-soul, is completely determined in its nature and its activity by this World-soul ; it is consubstantial with the divine Pneuma and dependent upon it. Just for this reason the World-reason, the Xoyot, is for the soul the highest law (cf. above, § 14, 3). The soul's independence is therefore only one that is limited by time, and in any case it is its ultimate destiny to be taken back into the divine All-mind at the universal conflagration of the world. With regard to the continuance of this independence, i-e. as to the extent of individual immortality, various views were current in the school; some recognised the duration of all souls until the time of the universal conflagration, others reserved this for the wise only.
As now the one Pneuma of the universe (whose seat was located by the Stoics sometimes in heaven, sometimes in the sun, sometimes in the midst of the world) pours itself forth into all things as animating force, so the ruling part of the individual soul (t6 ^y«f">-
niror Aoyurjuk) in which dwell ideas, judgments, and impulses, and
• Slob. Bel. I. 374. Dox. D. 463, 18: «J«u t4 it rwC^a 'troSr 'airro rpit 4»»t» *ai it tirrti, if thCus iavri ttroiw wpirtt (a! irtru «t\.
• Cf. H. Riebeck Zttttrk. f. Vfilkerptychologie, 1881, pp. 304 fl. • SMBcaiaa, Dt Xat. Horn. p. 34.
188 Hellenistic-Roman Thought ; Ethical Period. [Pari II.
as whose seat the heart was assumed, was regarded as extending its particular ramifications throughout the whole body, like the "arms of a polyp. " Of such particular "pneuraata" the Stoa assumed seven, — the five senses, the faculty of speech, and the reproductive power. As the unity of the divine Primitive Being dwells in the universe, so the individual personality lives in the body.
It is characteristic that the Epicureans could entirely -adopt this external apparatus of psychological views. For them, too, the soul — which according to Democritus consists of the finest atoms — is a fiery, atmospheric breath (they apply likewise the term "pneuma"); but they see in this breath something that is intro duced into the body from without, something held fast by the body and mechanically connected with which in death forthwith scattered. They also distinguish between the rational and the irrational part of the soul, without, however, being able to attribute to the former the metaphysical dignity which acquired in the Stoic theory. Here, too, their doctrine on the whole, insufficient and dependent.
In accordance with the pantheistic presupposition of the system, the metaphysics and physics of the Stoics form also theology, system of natural religion based on scientific demonstra tion, and this found also poetic presentations in the school, such as the hymn of Cleanthes. Epicureanism, on the contrary, is in its whole nature anti-religious. It takes throughout the standpoint of " Enlightenment," that religion has been overcome by science, and that the task and triumph of wisdom to put aside the phantoms of superstition which have grown out of fear and ignorance. The poet of this school depicts in grotesque outlines the evils which religion brought on man, and sings the glory of their conquest by scientific knowledge. 1 It all the more amusing that the Epicurean theory itself fell to depicting mythology of its own which re garded as harmless. It believed that certain degree of truth must attach to the universal faith in gods,1 but found that this correct idea was disfigured by false assumptions. These sought in the myths which feigned participation of the gods in human life, and an interference on their part in the course of things even the Stoics' belief in Providence appeared to them in this respect as but a refined illusion. Epicurus, therefore, — following Democritus in his doctrine of the eidola, or images 10, 4), — saw in the gods giant forms resembling men, who lead blessed life of contemplation and spiritual intercourse in the intermediate spaces between the
Lucret. De Rer. Nat. 62 ff. Diog. Laert. X. 123 U§. 60
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Ckap. 1, { Id. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Epicureans, Stoics. 189
worlds (intermundia), undisturbed by the change of events, and unconcerned as to the destiny of lower beings ; and thus this doc trine, also, is fundamentally only the attempt of Epicureanism to put in mythological form its ideal of aesthetic self-enjoyment.
8. It was in an entirely different way that the ideas of the popular religion were fitted into the Stoic metaphysics. Whereas,
up to this time in the development of Greek thought philosoph ical theology had separated itself farther and farther from the indigenous mythology, we meet here, for the first time, the systematic attempt to bring natural and positive religion into harmony. Accordingly, when the Stoics, also, yielded to the need of recognising the warrant of ideas universally present throughout the human race (cf. § 17, 4), their pneuma doctrine offered them not only a welcome instrument, but suggestions that were determinative.
For consideration of the universe must teach them that the divine World-power has evidently taken on mightier forms and those of more vigorous life than individual human souls; and so, beside the one deity without beginning and end, which for the most part they
designated as Zeus, a great number of "gods that had come into exist- t*re," made their appearance. To these the Stoics, as Plato and Aristotle had already done, reckoned first of all the stars, which
they too honoured as higher intelligences and especially pure for mations of the primitive fire, and further, the personifications of other natural forces in which the power of Providence, benevolent to man, reveals itself. From this point of view we can understand bow an extensive interpretation of myths was the order of the day in the Stoic school, seeking to incorporate the popular figures in its Metaphysical system by all kinds of allegories. In addition to this there was an equally welcome use of the Euemeristic theory, which not only explained and justified the deification of prominent men, but taught also to consider the demons sacred, as the guardian iflints of individual men.
Thus the Stoic world became peopled with a whole host of higher tad lower gods, bnt they all appeared as ultimately but emanations of the one highest World-power, — as the subordinate powers or forces
which, themselves determined by the universal Pneuma, were con ceived of as the ruling spirits of the world's life. They formed, therefore, for the faith of the Stoics, the mediating organs, which
represent, each in its realm, the vital force and Providence of the World-reason, and to them the piety of the Stoics turned in the forms of worship of positive religion. The polytheism of the popular faith was thus philosophically re-established, and taken up as an lolegraat constituent into metaphysical pantheism.
190 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
In connection with this scientific reconstruction of positive re ligion stands the theoretical justification of divination in the Stoic system where it awakened great interest, except in the case of a few men like Panaetius, who thought more coolly. The interconnection and providentially governed unity of the world's processes was held to show itself — as one form of manifestation — in the possibility that different things and processes which stand in no direct causal rela tion to one another, may yet point to one another by delicate rela tions, and therefore be able to serve as signs for one another. The human soul is capable of understanding these by virtue of its rela tionship with the all-ruling Pneuma, but for the full interpretation of such ecstatic revelations the art and science of divination, resting upon experience, must be added. On this basis Stoicism regarded itself as strong enough to elaborate philosophically all the divination of the ancient world. This was especially true of its younger repre sentatives, and in particular, as it seems, of Posidonius.
§ 16. The Freedom of the Will and the Perfection of the World.
The sharp definition of the contrasted mechanical and teleological views of the world, and especially the difference in the conceptional forms in which the thought, common to a certain extent, of Nature's universal conformity to law had been developed, led, in connection with the ethical postulates and presuppositions which controlled the thought of the time, to two new problems, which from the beginning had various complications. These were the problems of the freedom of the human will and of the goodness and perfection of the world. Both problems grew out of contradictions which made their appearance between moral needs and just those meta physical theories which had been formed to satisfy those needs.
1. The proper home for the formation of these new problems was the Stoic system, and they may be understood as the necessary consequence of a deep and ultimately irreconcilable antagonism be tween the fundamental principles of the system. These principles are metaphysical monism and ethical dualism. The fundamental moral doctrine of the Stoics, according to which man should overcome the world in his own impulses by virtue, presupposes an anthropological duality, an opposition in human nature in accordance with which reason stands over against a sensuous nature contrary to reason. Without this antithesis the whole Stoic ethics is ready to fall. The metaphysical doctrine, however, by which the command of reason in man is to be explained, postulates such an unrestricted and all
Chaf. 1, J 1<J. ] Freedom of the Will : Socrates, Aristotle. 191
controlling reality of the World-reason that the reality of what is contrary to reason, either in man or in the course of the world, cannot be united therewith. From this source grew the two ques tions which since then have never ceased to employ man's critical investigation, although all essential points of view that can come into consideration in the case were more or less clearly illumined at that time.
2. The conceptions which form the presuppositions for the prob lem offreedom lie ready at hand in the ethical reflections ou the voluntary nature of wrongdoing, which were begun by Socrates and brought to a preliminary conclusion by Aristotle in a brilliant investigation. 1 The motives of these thoughts are ethical through out, and the domain in which they move is exclusively psychologi cal. The question at issue is hence essentially that of freedom of choice, and while the reality of this is doubtless affirmed upon the
basis of immediate feeling, and with reference to man's conscious ness of his responsibility, difficulty arises only in consequence of the intellectualistic conception of Socrates, who brought the will into complete dependence upon insight. This difficulty develops primarily in the double meaning of " freedom," or, as it is here still called, " voluntariness " (Uownov), an ambiguity which has since been repeated again and again in the most variously shifted forms. According to Socrates, all ethically wrong action proceeds from a wrong view — a view clouded by desires. He who thus acts does not " know," therefore, what he is doing, and in this sense he acts
involuntarily. ' That is, only the wise man is free ; the wicked is n»t free. 1 From this ethical conception of freedom, however, the /tfchological conception of freedom —i. e. the conception of freedom of choice as the ability to decide between different motives — must be carefully separated. Whether Socrates did this is a question ; ' at all events, it was done by Plato. The latter expressly affirmed man's freedom of choice,' appealing to his responsibility, — a psycho logical decision on essentially ethical grounds, — and, at the same time, he held fast to the Soc ratio doctrine that the wicked man acts involuntarily, i. e. is ethically not free. He even connects the two directly when he develops the thought * that man may sink into the
' BtK . Vfc. III. 1-8.
< Xen Mem. III. 9, 4 ; Cyrop. HI. 1, 38.
• Ct Art*. Etk. Sic. III. 7, 113 b 14.
* According to a remark in the Peripatetic Magna Moralia (I. 9, 1187 a 7)
Vicrate*. indeed, had expressly said, " it is not in our power" to be good or bad According to thla, therefore, he had denied pgycholoKical freedom.
* Flat. Hep. X. 617 ff. • Pfau. Ftued. 81 B.
i92 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Ethical Period. [Part IL
condition of ethical non-freedom by his own fault, and, therefore,
with psychological freedom.
With Aristotle, who separated himself farther from the Socratic
intellectualism, the psychological conception of freedom comes out more clearly and independently. He proceeds from the position that ethical qualification in general is applicable only in the case of " voluntary " actions, and discusses in the first place the prejudices which this voluntariness sustains, partly from external force (/? »? ) and psychical compulsion, and partly from ignorance of the matter. That action only is completely voluntary which has its origin in the personality itself, and of which the relations are fully known. 1 The whole investigation ' is maintained from the standpoint of responsi bility, and the discovered conception of voluntariness is designed to lead to the conception of accountability. It contains within itself the characteristics of external freedom of action, and of a conception of the situation unclouded by any deception. But, on this account, it must be still further restricted, for among his voluntary acts a man can be held accountable for those only that proceed from a choice (wpoaiptfris). 3 Freedom of choice, therefore, which proceeds by reflecting upon ends as well as upon means, is the condition of ethical accountability.
Aristotle avoided a farther entrance upon the psychology of motivation and upon the determining causes of this choice ; he con tents himself with establishing the position that the personality itself is the sufficient reason for the actions * which are ascribed to it ; and to this maintenance of the freedom of choice his school, and
especially Theophrastus, freedom, held fast.
who composed a treatise of his own on
3. On this same basis we find also the Stoics, in so far as purely ethical considerations are concerned. Precisely that lively feeling of responsibility which characterises their morals demanded of them the recognition of this free choice on the part of the individual, and they sought therefore to maintain this in every way.
Their position became critical, however, by reason of the fact that their metaphysics, with its doctrine of fate and providence, drove them beyond this attitude. For since this theory of fate made man, like all other creatures, determined in all his external and internal formation and in all that he does and suffers, by the
1 Kth. Nic. III.
