Note 2 — Chapter V · LOGIC OF THE STOICS.

A. Materialism. (1) Meaning of the Stoic materialism. (a) Material or corporeal objects. (α) Reality belongs to material objects only. Nothing appears more striking to a reader fresh from the study of Plato or Aristotle than the startling contrast to those writers presented by the Materialism of the Stoics. Whilst so far following Plato as to define a real thing2 to be anything possessing the capacity of acting or being acted upon, the Stoics nevertheless restricted the possession of this power to material objects. Hence followed their conclusion that nothing real exists except what is material; or, if they could not deny existence in some sense or other to what is incorporeal, they were fain to assert that essential and real Being only belongs to what is material, whereas of what is incorporeal only a certain modified kind of Being can be predicated.3 Following out this view, it was natural that they should regard many things as corporeal which are not generally considered such; for instance, the soul and virtue. Nevertheless, it would not be correct to say4 that the Stoics gave to the conception of matter or corporeity a more extended meaning than it usually bears. For they define a body to be that which has three dimensions,5 and they also lay themselves out to prove how things generally considered to be incorporeal may be material in the strictest sense of the term. Thus besides upholding the corporeal character of all substances, including the human soul and God,6 they likewise assert that properties or forms are material: all attributes by means of which one object is distinguished from another are produced by the existence (β) Theory of air-currents. of certain air-currents,7 which, emanating from the centre of an object, diffuse themselves to its extremities, and having reached the surface, return again to the centre to constitute the inward unity.8 Nor was the theory of air-currents confined to bodily attributes. It was applied quite as much to mental attributes. Virtues and vices are said to be material,9 and are deduced from the tension imparted to the soul by atmospheric substances therein subsisting.10 For the same reason the Good is called a body, for according to the Stoics the Good is only a virtue, and virtue is a definite condition of that material which constitutes the soul.11 In the same sense also truth is said to be material, personal and not independent, truth being of course meant,12 that is to say, knowledge, or a property of the soul that knows. And since according to the Stoics knowledge consists in the presence of certain material elements within the soul, truth in the sense of knowledge may be rightly called something material. Even emotions, impulses, notions and judgments, in so far as they are due to material causes—the air-currents pouring into the soul (πνεύματα)—were regarded as material objects, and for the same reason not only artistic skill but individual actions were said to be corporeal.13 Yet (γ) The causes of actions material. certain actions, such as walking and dancing, can hardly have been called bodies by the Stoics, any more than being wise was called a body;14 but the objects which produced these actions, as indeed everything which makes itself felt, were considered to be corporeal. To us it appears most natural to refer these actions to the soul as their originating cause; but the Stoics, holding the theory of subject-matter and property, preferred to refer each such action to some special material as its cause, considering that an action is due to the presence of this material. The idealism of Plato was thus reproduced in a new form by the materialism of the Stoics. Plato had said, a man is just and musical when he participates in the idea of justice and music; the Stoics said, a man is virtuous when the material producing virtue is in him; musical, when he has the material producing music.