Part 2 — CHAPTER VI. THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

The present chapter will be devoted to considering the first of these groups—the fundamental positions held by the Stoics in regard to nature; among which three specially deserve notice—their Materialism; their Dynamical view of the world; and their Pantheism.

(2) Causes which produced the Stoic materialism. The question next before us is: What led the Stoics to this materialism? It might be supposed that their peculiar theory of knowledge based on sensation was the cause; but this theory did not preclude the possibility of advancing from the sensible to the super-sensible. It might quite as well be said that their theory of knowledge was a consequence of their materialism, and that they referred all knowledge to sensation, because they could allow no real being to anything which is not material. The probability therefore remains that their theory of knowledge and their materialistic view of nature both indicate one and the same habit of mind, and that both are due to the action of the same causes.

(a) The Stoic materialism not an expansion of Peripatetic views. Nor will it do to seek for these causes in the influence exercised by the Peripatetic or pre-Socratic philosophy on the Stoic School. At first sight, indeed, it might appear that the Stoics had borrowed from Heraclitus their materialism, together with their other views on nature; or else their materialism might seem to be an expansion of the metaphysical notions of Plato and Aristotle. For if Aristotle denied Plato’s distinction of form and matter to such an extent that he would hardly allow form to exist at all except in union with matter, might it not appear to others more logical to do away with the distinction between them in thought, thus reducing both to a property of matter? Were there not difficulties in the doctrine of a God external to the world, of a passionless Reason? Were there not even difficulties in the antithesis of form and matter, which Aristotle’s system was powerless to overcome? And had not Aristoxenus and Dicæarchus before the time of Zeno, and Strato immediately after his time, been led from the ground occupied by the Peripatetics to materialistic views? And yet we must pause before accepting this explanation. The founder of Stoicism appears, from what is recorded of his intellectual growth, to have been repelled by the Peripatetic School more than by any other; nor is there the least indication in the records of the Stoic teaching that that teaching resulted from a criticism of the Aristotelian and Platonic views of a double origin of things. Far from it, the proposition that everything capable of acting or being acted upon must be material, appears with the Stoics as an independent axiom needing no further proof.

(b) The Stoic materialism not due to Heraclitus. The supposed connection between the Stoics and Heraclitus, so far from explaining their materialistic views, already presumes their existence. Yet long before Zeno’s time the philosophy of Heraclitus as a living tradition had become extinct. No historical connection therefore, or relation of original dependence, can possibly exist between the two, but at most a subsequent perception of relationship can have directed Zeno to Heraclitus. Zeno’s own view of the world was not a consequence, but the cause, of his sympathy with Heraclitus. In short, neither the Peripatetics nor Heraclitus can have given the first impulse to Zeno’s materialism, although they may have helped in many ways to strengthen his views on that subject, when already formed.