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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
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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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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. 3, 1111 a 73 : oS * tpXh *» *{'Tv 'liir* T* *«*" '««"» '» •*« *
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all-animating World-power, personality ceased to be the true ground (<L>X*i) of his actions, and these appeared to be, like all else that occurs, but the predetermined and unavoidably necessary operations of the God-Nature. In fact, the Stoa did not shrink from this extreme consequence of determinism; on the contrary, Ghrysippus heaped up proof on proof for this doctrine. He based it upon the principle of sufficient reason (cf. above, § 15, 2) ; he showed that
only by presupposing this could the correctness of judgments con cerning the future be maintained, since a criterion for their truth or falsity is given only if the matter is already determined ; ' he also gave to this argument the changed form, that since only the necessary can be known, and not that which is still undecided, the
foreknowledge of the gods makes necessary the assumption of deter minism; he even did not scorn to adduce the fulfilment of predic Dona as a welcome argument.
In this doctrine, which, from the standpoint of the Stoic doctrine of the logos, was completely consistent, the opponents of the system saw of course a decided denial of freedom of the will, and of the criticisms which the system experienced this was perhaps the most frequent and at the same time the most incisive. Among the numerous attacks the best known is the so-called ignava ratio, or *- lazy reason " (apyos A. dyot), which from the claim of the unavoid able necessity of future events draws the fatalistic conclusion that one should await them inactively, — an attack which Ghrysippus did not know how to avoid except by the aid of very forced distinc tions. ' The Stoics, on the contrary, concerned themselves to show that in spite of this determinism, and rather exactly by virtue of man remains the cause of his actions in the sense that he to be made responsible for them. On the basis of distinction between main and accessory causes (which, moreover, reminds us throughout of the Platonic oTtiov and (womov) Ghrysippus showed that every decision of the will does indeed necessarily follow from the co-opera tion of man with his environment, but that just here the outer circumstances are only the accessory causes, while the assent pro ceeding from the personality the main cause, and to this account ability applies. While, however, this voluntarily acting ijycftovucoV, or ruling faculty of man, determined from the universal Pneuma, this Pneuma takes on in every separate being self-subsistent
Cfc. Dt Palo, 10, 20. So far as concerns disjunctive propositions Epicurus also lor this reason gave up the truth of disjunction Cic. Dt Nat. Dtor. H. 70.
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194 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [1*aht II.
nature, different from that of others, and this is to be regarded as a proper aprf-1 ^n particular, the Stoics make prominent the point that responsibility, as a judgment pronounced on the ethical quality of actions and characters, is quite independent of the question whether the persons or deeds might, in the course of events, have been other than they were, or not. 1
4. The problem of the freedom of the will, which had been already complicated ethically and psychologically, experienced in this way still further a metaphysical and (in the Stoic sense) theo logical complication, and the consequence was that the indeterminists who were opponents of the Stoa gave a new turn to the conception of freedom which they regarded as threatened by the Stoic doctrine, and brought it into sharp definition. The assumption of the excep tionless causal nexus to which even the functions of the will were to be subordinated, seemed to exclude the capacity of free decision ; but this freedom of choice had, since Aristotle, been regarded in all schools as the indispensable presupposition of ethical accountability. On this account the opponents thought — and this gave the contro versy its especial violence — that they were defending an ethical good when they combated the Stoic doctrine of fate, and with that the Democritic principle of natural necessity. And if Chrysippus had appealed to the principle of sufficient reason to establish this, Carneades, to whom the freedom of the will was an incontestable fact, did not fear to draw in question the universal and invariable validity of this principle. *
Epicurus went still farther. He found the Stoic determinism so irreconcilable with the wise man's self-determination which formed the essential feature of his ethical ideal, that he would rather still assume the illusory ideas of religion than believe in such a slavery of the soul. 4 Therefore he, too, denied the universal validity of the causal law and subsumed freedom together with chance under the conception of uncaused occurrence. Thus in opposition to Stoic determinism, the metaphysical conception of freedom arose, by means of which Epicurus put the uncaused function of the will in man upon a parallel with the causeless deviation of the atoms from their line of fall (cf. § 15, 4). The freedom of indeterminism means, accordingly, a choice between different possibilities that is deter mined by no causes, aud Epicurus thought thereby to rescue moral responsibility.
This metaphysical conception of freedom as causelessness is not at
«Alex. Aphr. DeFato,p. 112. »Cic. DeFato,6,9; 11,23; 14,31. * lb. p. IOC. * Diog. Laert. X. 138 f. ; Us. p. 66.
Chap. 1, § 16. ] Phytico-Theology : Epicurus, Stoics. 195
all isolated in the scientific thought of antiquity. Only the Stoa held fast inviolably to the principle of causality. Even Aristotle had not followed into details the application of his general principles (ef. p. 143); he had contented himself with the eVi to iroXu, " for the most part," and had based his renunciation of the attempt fully to comprehend the particular upon the assumption of the contingent in Nature, i. e. of the lawless and causeless. In this respect the Stoics alone are to be regarded as forerunners of the modern study of Nature.
Stoicism encountered difficulties which were no less great, in carrying out its teleology. The pantheistic system which regarded the whole world as the living product of divine Reason acting according to ends, and found in this its sole ground of explanation, must of course maintain also the purposiveness, goodness, and perfec tion of this universe and conversely the Stoics were accustomed to prove the existence of the gods and of Providence by pointing to the purposiveness, beauty, and perfection of the world that by the so-called physico-theological method. 1
Tbe attacks which this line of thought experienced in antiquity were directed not so much against the correctness of the reasoning (though Carneades applied his criticism at this point also) as against the premises and conversely, the easy exhibition of the many defects and maladaptations, of the evils and the ethical harm in the world was employed as counter-reason against the assump tion of a rational, purposeful World-cause and of Providence. This was done first and with full energy, naturally, by Epicurus, who asked whether God would remove the evil in the world but could not, or could remove but would not, or whether perhaps neither of these was true,* — and who also pointed to the instances of injustice in which the course of life so often makes the good miserable and the wicked happy. 3
These objections, intensified and carried out with especial care, were brought into the field by Carneades. * But to the reference to tbe evil and injustice of the course of events he added the objec tion to which the Stoics were most sensitive " Whence then in this world which has been created by Reason comes that which void of reason and contrary to reason, whence in this world ani mated by the divine Spirit come sin and folly, the greatest of all
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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.
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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
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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
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Chat. 1, $ 18. ] Freedom of the Will : Stoics, Epicurus. 19?
all-animating World-power, personality ceased to be the true ground (<L>X*i) of his actions, and these appeared to be, like all else that occurs, but the predetermined and unavoidably necessary operations of the God-Nature. In fact, the Stoa did not shrink from this extreme consequence of determinism; on the contrary, Ghrysippus heaped up proof on proof for this doctrine. He based it upon the principle of sufficient reason (cf. above, § 15, 2) ; he showed that
only by presupposing this could the correctness of judgments con cerning the future be maintained, since a criterion for their truth or falsity is given only if the matter is already determined ; ' he also gave to this argument the changed form, that since only the necessary can be known, and not that which is still undecided, the
foreknowledge of the gods makes necessary the assumption of deter minism; he even did not scorn to adduce the fulfilment of predic Dona as a welcome argument.
In this doctrine, which, from the standpoint of the Stoic doctrine of the logos, was completely consistent, the opponents of the system saw of course a decided denial of freedom of the will, and of the criticisms which the system experienced this was perhaps the most frequent and at the same time the most incisive. Among the numerous attacks the best known is the so-called ignava ratio, or *- lazy reason " (apyos A. dyot), which from the claim of the unavoid able necessity of future events draws the fatalistic conclusion that one should await them inactively, — an attack which Ghrysippus did not know how to avoid except by the aid of very forced distinc tions. ' The Stoics, on the contrary, concerned themselves to show that in spite of this determinism, and rather exactly by virtue of man remains the cause of his actions in the sense that he to be made responsible for them. On the basis of distinction between main and accessory causes (which, moreover, reminds us throughout of the Platonic oTtiov and (womov) Ghrysippus showed that every decision of the will does indeed necessarily follow from the co-opera tion of man with his environment, but that just here the outer circumstances are only the accessory causes, while the assent pro ceeding from the personality the main cause, and to this account ability applies. While, however, this voluntarily acting ijycftovucoV, or ruling faculty of man, determined from the universal Pneuma, this Pneuma takes on in every separate being self-subsistent
Cfc. Dt Palo, 10, 20. So far as concerns disjunctive propositions Epicurus also lor this reason gave up the truth of disjunction Cic. Dt Nat. Dtor. H. 70.
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194 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [1*aht II.
nature, different from that of others, and this is to be regarded as a proper aprf-1 ^n particular, the Stoics make prominent the point that responsibility, as a judgment pronounced on the ethical quality of actions and characters, is quite independent of the question whether the persons or deeds might, in the course of events, have been other than they were, or not. 1
4. The problem of the freedom of the will, which had been already complicated ethically and psychologically, experienced in this way still further a metaphysical and (in the Stoic sense) theo logical complication, and the consequence was that the indeterminists who were opponents of the Stoa gave a new turn to the conception of freedom which they regarded as threatened by the Stoic doctrine, and brought it into sharp definition. The assumption of the excep tionless causal nexus to which even the functions of the will were to be subordinated, seemed to exclude the capacity of free decision ; but this freedom of choice had, since Aristotle, been regarded in all schools as the indispensable presupposition of ethical accountability. On this account the opponents thought — and this gave the contro versy its especial violence — that they were defending an ethical good when they combated the Stoic doctrine of fate, and with that the Democritic principle of natural necessity. And if Chrysippus had appealed to the principle of sufficient reason to establish this, Carneades, to whom the freedom of the will was an incontestable fact, did not fear to draw in question the universal and invariable validity of this principle. *
Epicurus went still farther. He found the Stoic determinism so irreconcilable with the wise man's self-determination which formed the essential feature of his ethical ideal, that he would rather still assume the illusory ideas of religion than believe in such a slavery of the soul. 4 Therefore he, too, denied the universal validity of the causal law and subsumed freedom together with chance under the conception of uncaused occurrence. Thus in opposition to Stoic determinism, the metaphysical conception of freedom arose, by means of which Epicurus put the uncaused function of the will in man upon a parallel with the causeless deviation of the atoms from their line of fall (cf. § 15, 4). The freedom of indeterminism means, accordingly, a choice between different possibilities that is deter mined by no causes, aud Epicurus thought thereby to rescue moral responsibility.
This metaphysical conception of freedom as causelessness is not at
«Alex. Aphr. DeFato,p. 112. »Cic. DeFato,6,9; 11,23; 14,31. * lb. p. IOC. * Diog. Laert. X. 138 f. ; Us. p. 66.
Chap. 1, § 16. ] Phytico-Theology : Epicurus, Stoics. 195
all isolated in the scientific thought of antiquity. Only the Stoa held fast inviolably to the principle of causality. Even Aristotle had not followed into details the application of his general principles (ef. p. 143); he had contented himself with the eVi to iroXu, " for the most part," and had based his renunciation of the attempt fully to comprehend the particular upon the assumption of the contingent in Nature, i. e. of the lawless and causeless. In this respect the Stoics alone are to be regarded as forerunners of the modern study of Nature.
Stoicism encountered difficulties which were no less great, in carrying out its teleology. The pantheistic system which regarded the whole world as the living product of divine Reason acting according to ends, and found in this its sole ground of explanation, must of course maintain also the purposiveness, goodness, and perfec tion of this universe and conversely the Stoics were accustomed to prove the existence of the gods and of Providence by pointing to the purposiveness, beauty, and perfection of the world that by the so-called physico-theological method. 1
Tbe attacks which this line of thought experienced in antiquity were directed not so much against the correctness of the reasoning (though Carneades applied his criticism at this point also) as against the premises and conversely, the easy exhibition of the many defects and maladaptations, of the evils and the ethical harm in the world was employed as counter-reason against the assump tion of a rational, purposeful World-cause and of Providence. This was done first and with full energy, naturally, by Epicurus, who asked whether God would remove the evil in the world but could not, or could remove but would not, or whether perhaps neither of these was true,* — and who also pointed to the instances of injustice in which the course of life so often makes the good miserable and the wicked happy. 3
These objections, intensified and carried out with especial care, were brought into the field by Carneades. * But to the reference to tbe evil and injustice of the course of events he added the objec tion to which the Stoics were most sensitive " Whence then in this world which has been created by Reason comes that which void of reason and contrary to reason, whence in this world ani mated by the divine Spirit come sin and folly, the greatest of all
Clc.
