STOICS

A celebrated sect of antiquity; so called from the stoa or porch, in Athens, which was the scene of the discourses of their founder Zeno of Ciltium (B.C. 300). The Stoics are proverbially known for the sternne and austerity of their elhical doctrines, and for the influence which their tenets exercised over some of the noblest spirits of antiquity.To give a connected and systematic account of the philosophical principles on which they grounded their moral precepts is a le easy task than, from the notoriety of the latter in some of their main features, might have been anticipated. Their speculations were not confined to ethical subjects, but aimed at embracing the whole circle of human knowledge; physics, theology, and logic, no le than morals and polities. Their system, as far as we can gather from the notices preserved by Cicero, Diogenes, and others, appears to be an attempt to reconcile a theological pantheism and a materialist psychology with a logic which seeks the foundations of knowledge in sensible experience, and a morality which claims as Us firs! principle the absolute freedom of the human will. Of the mode in which they comuined dogmas apparently so Inconsistent into a philosophical whole, we have accounts sufficient to inspire us with respect for the earnestne and strength of character po e ed by the leaders of their sect, and with admiration of their subtlety, ingenuity, and depth. We discern, at the same lime, in all their speculations, equally a narrow and controversial spirit, most unlike the critical but comprehensive impartiality which marks the philosophical writings of their great predece ors; of Plato, and, in a still more eminent degree, of Aristotle, The philosophy of the Stoics itially polemical. On every side it presented an armed front to an opponent It sought to confute the aca domic scepticism by the strenuous a ertion of the truth of sensible perceptions, and the validity of the judgments to which they lead by a vigorous protest in favour of the common sense of mankind as opposed to the theories of the schools. Sensation, they affirmed, is not merely a pa ive a flection of the mind; it becomes, under certain conditions, perception or comprehension UariAjjd'tj) — a faculty whereby the mind reaches beyond itself, and lays hold, as it were, on outward being. From the acquisitions of sensible experience are formed conceptions and judgments of succe ive stages of generality, which it is the province of the reason to construct into philosophical system. Such is the stoical logic, which is consequently a material, and not, as with Aristotle, a formal science. An equally controversial bearing is perceptible in the remainder of their philosophy. Their greatest enemies, the Epicureans, had adopted the mcchanicocorpuscular theory of Demo crit us, which accounted for all physical phenomena by the varieties in size and figure of the ultimate atoms of which all substances are the aggregate. The fortuitous concretions which thus became the first cause of all things, had attracted the partialities and won the a ent of a sect averse in all things equally to limitation or constraint. The Stoics espoused the opposite doctrine of a one ail-pervading substance, a permeating ether, a creative fire, the source of life and law to the material universe. On this they built their doctrine of a universal providence, excluding chance in the least things as in the greatest, and directing all events by irresistible nece ity to the promotion of perfect good. The same hypothesis furnished them with a ground for the first principle of their ethical doctrines. " Live according to nature" is, with the Stoics, the expre ion of the coincidence which ought to exist between the human will and the universal reason, which, as we have seen, they identified with the life and power of nature. This coincidence is virtue, the.only good; as vice, its opposite, is the only evil. All things else are in themselves indifferent; being approved or disapproved only by comparison. Virtue is the perfect harmony of the soul with itself; vice is, in its e ence, inconsistent and self contradictory. The wise man, the ideal of human perfection,is absolutely, and without qualification, free. His actions are determined by his free will, with a power as irresistible as that by which universal nature is guided and animated. In the one no le than in the other, freedom and nece ity are one. In these doctrines the controversial character to which [s. 1197]