Note 112 — Chapter X · ETHICS. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE STOIC ETHICS. ABSTRACT THEORY OF MORALITY.
Oswald J. (Oswald Joseph) Reichel translation
(b) The virtues severally. But how are we to reconcile with this view the Stoic teaching of a plurality of virtues and their mutual relations? As the common root from which they spring, Zeno, following Aristotle, regarded understanding, Cleanthes, strength of mind, Aristo, at one time health, at another the knowledge of good and evil.112 Later teachers, after the time of Chrysippus, thought that it consisted in knowledge or wisdom, understanding by wisdom absolute knowledge, the knowing all things, human and divine.113 From this common root, a multiplicity of virtues was supposed to proceed, which, after Plato’s example, are grouped round four principal virtues114—intelligence, bravery, justice, self-control.115 Intelligence consists in knowing what is good and bad, and what is neither the one nor the other, the indifferent;116 bravery, in knowing what to choose, what to avoid, and what neither to choose nor to avoid; or, substituting the corresponding personal attitude for knowledge, bravery is fearless obedience to the law of reason, both in boldness and endurance.117 Self-control consists in knowing what to choose, and what to eschew, and what neither to choose nor eschew;118 justice, in knowing how to give to everyone what is his due.119 In a corresponding manner, the principal faults are traced back to the conception of ignorance.120 Probably all these definitions belong to Chrysippus.121 Other definitions are attributed to his predecessors,122 some more nearly, others more remotely, agreeing with him in their conception of virtue. Within these limits, a great number of individual virtues were distinguished, their differences and precise shades of meaning being worked out with all the pedantry which characterised Chrysippus.123 The definitions of a portion of them have been preserved by Diogenes and Stobæus.124 In a similar way, too, the Stoics carried their classification of errors into the minutest details.125