Note 9 — Chapter IV · AUTHORITIES FOR THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY: ITS PROBLEM AND DIVISIONS.

(2) Necessity for intellectual knowledge. This view of the problem of philosophy is more precisely defined by the Stoic doctrine of virtue. Philosophy should lead to right action and to virtue. But right action is, according to the Stoics, only rational action, and rational action is action which is in harmony with human and inanimate nature. Virtue consists therefore in bringing man’s actions into harmony with the laws of the universe, and with the general order of the world. This is only possible when man knows that order and those laws; and thus the Stoics are brought back to the principles of Socrates, that virtue may be learnt; that knowledge is indispensable for virtue, or rather that virtue is identical with right knowledge. They define virtue in so many words as knowledge, vice as ignorance. If sometimes they seem to identify virtue with strength of will, it is only because they consider strength of will to be inseparable from knowledge, so that the one cannot be conceived without the other. Hence the practical study of philosophy conducts with them to the intellectual; philosophy is not only virtue, but without philosophy no virtue is possible.9 Granting that the attainment of virtue, and the happiness of a moral life, are the chief ends which the Stoics propose to themselves, still the possession of a comprehensive scientific knowledge is indispensable, as the only means thereto.