De Stoicorum Repugnantis

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

First I hold that the agreement of a philosophy's doctrines ought to be examined in the lives of its adherents. For it is not merely, as Aeschines said of the orator, that word and law must speak the same thing; rather the philosopher's life ought to be in harmony with his teaching. For the philosopher's reasoned account is a law he has chosen for himself and made his own, at least if they truly regard philosophy — as indeed it is — not as play and word-hunting for the sake of reputation, but as a task worthy of the greatest seriousness.

Since, then, Zeno himself wrote much, considering how little he wrote on other things, and Cleanthes much, and Chrysippus most of all, on statecraft — on being ruled and ruling, on judging cases and on public speaking — yet in their lives one can find in none of them any generalship, any lawgiving, any entry into the council, any advocacy before the courts, any military campaign on behalf of their country, any embassy, any public benefaction. No: as though they had tasted some foreign lotus of leisure, they spent their whole life — no short one, but exceedingly long — in discourses and books and walks in the colonnades. It is not unclear that they lived their lives in agreement not with what they themselves professed but rather with what others wrote and said — that very quietism which Epicurus and Hieronymus praise — living out their days entirely in it.

Chrysippus himself, at any rate, in the fourth book On Lives, holds that the scholastic life differs not at all from the life of pleasure. I will quote his very words: "As for those who suppose that the scholastic life belongs above all to philosophers from the outset, these seem to me to be mistaken, supposing that one must do this for the sake of some pastime or something else of that kind, and so drag out one's whole life in this fashion — which, if clearly examined, amounts to living pleasantly. For their underlying assumption must not go unnoticed, since many say this plainly and not a few more obscurely."

Who, then, grew old more thoroughly in this very scholastic life than Chrysippus, and Cleanthes, and Diogenes, and Zeno, and Antipater — men who even abandoned their own native countries, with no complaint, except so as to spend their days quietly at leisure and engaged in literary pursuits in the Odeum and at Zoster? Aristocreon, at any rate, the pupil and kinsman of Chrysippus, when he set up a bronze statue of him, inscribed this epigram upon it: "This new Chrysippus did Aristocreon dedicate — the cleaver that severs the knotty tangles of the Academics." This, then, is the very Chrysippus — the old man, the philosopher, the one who praises the royal and political life but supposes the scholastic life to differ not at all from the life of pleasure!

As for the rest who do engage in public affairs, they are still more at odds with their own doctrines. For they hold office and judge cases and give counsel and legislate and punish and honor, as though there really existed cities in which they hold office — with councilors and jurors always chosen by lot, and generals elected by show of hands, and laws those of Cleisthenes and Lycurgus and Solon — whom they say were foolish and senseless men. So that even in taking part in public life they contradict themselves.

Moreover Antipater, in his work on the dispute between Cleanthes and Chrysippus, records that Zeno and Cleanthes were unwilling to become Athenian citizens, lest they seem to wrong their own native countries. Whether these two acted rightly, and Chrysippus wrongly in having himself enrolled as a citizen, let that be set aside. But there is a great and absurd contradiction in keeping their names attached to their native countries while having so thoroughly estranged their persons and their lives from them — just as if a man who had abandoned his wedded wife, and was living and sleeping with another and begetting children by her, should refuse to draw up a marriage contract with the second, so as not to seem to wrong the first.

Chrysippus, again, writing in his work On Rhetoric that the wise man will engage in public speaking and in politics on the assumption that wealth is a good, and reputation, and health, thereby admits that their arguments have no practical outlet and are unfit for political life, and that their doctrines are ill-fitted to actual needs and actions.

Further, it is a doctrine of Zeno's that "one ought not to build temples of the gods; for a temple is not worth much, and is not holy; and nothing made by the work of builders and craftsmen is worth much." Yet those who praise these sayings as sound are initiated in sanctuaries, go up to the Acropolis, bow down before the cult images, and hang garlands upon the temples — which are the works of builders and vulgar craftsmen! Then they think to refute the Epicureans for sacrificing to the gods, while they themselves are refuted still more, sacrificing as they do upon altars and in temples which they themselves maintain ought neither to exist nor to be built.

Zeno posits several distinct virtues, differing from one another, just as Plato does — prudence, courage, temperance, justice — as inseparable from one another yet distinct and different. But then again, when defining each of them, he says that courage is prudence in matters to be endured, temperance is prudence in matters to be chosen, and justice is prudence in matters to be distributed — as though it were one single virtue that only appears to differ according to its relations to particular activities. Nor is it only Zeno who is found contradicting himself on this point: Chrysippus too, while finding fault with Ariston for saying that the other virtues were merely dispositions of the one virtue, nevertheless supports Zeno in defining each of the virtues in just this way.

Cleanthes, in his Physical Notes, having said that tension is a stroke of fire, and that when it becomes sufficient in the soul to accomplish what is required, it is called strength and power, adds in these very words: "And this strength and power, when it occurs with respect to things that must be firmly held to as they appear, is self-control; when it occurs with respect to things that must be endured, it is courage; with respect to what is deserved, justice; and with respect to choices and avoidances, temperance."

Against the man who said, "Do not judge a case before you have heard both sides," Zeno used to argue in reply, employing some such reasoning as this: "If the first speaker has proven his case, the second need not be heard, for the matter under inquiry is settled; and if he has not proven it, it is just as if he had failed to answer when called, or answered but talked nonsense; but either he has proven it or he has not proven it; therefore the second speaker need not be heard." Yet having posed this very argument himself, he went on to write against Plato's Republic and to solve sophisms, and he urged his students to take up the study of dialectic as being capable of accomplishing just this. And yet either Plato proved, or did not prove, the doctrines in the Republic; on neither alternative was it necessary to write against him, but it was in every way superfluous and pointless. The same may be said concerning sophisms.

Chrysippus holds that young men ought first to attend lectures on logic, second on ethics, and after these on physics, and likewise, last of all after these, to take up the account concerning the gods. He says this in many places, but it will suffice to quote what he says in the fourth book On Lives, in these very words: "In the first place, then, it seems to me, in accordance with what has rightly been said by the ancients, that there are three kinds of the philosopher's theorems — the logical, the ethical, and the physical; and that among these, the logical must be ranked first, the ethical second, and the physical third; and of the physical, last of all comes the account concerning the gods — wherefore also they have called the handing-down of this account 'initiations.'"

But this very account, which he says must be ranked last — the account concerning the gods — he habitually places first and sets forth in advance of every ethical inquiry. For he appears not to speak at all about ends, or about justice, or about goods and evils, or about marriage and the rearing of children, or about law and the constitution, except as those who bring decrees before the cities first write at the head "Good Fortune" — so he too first writes at the head Zeus, Fate, Providence, the notion that the universe, being one and finite, is held together by a single power. None of these can be accepted as true unless one has been thoroughly steeped in the physical doctrines.

Hear what he says about these matters in the third book On the Gods: "For it is not possible to find any other origin or source of justice than that which comes from Zeus and from the common nature; for from this source everything of this kind must take its origin, if we are going to say anything at all about goods and evils." Again, in the Physical Theses: "For it is not possible to approach the account of goods and evils, nor the virtues, nor happiness, in any other or more appropriate way than from the common nature and from the governance of the universe." And proceeding further he again says: "For it is necessary to connect the account of goods and evils with these matters, there being no other, better source or point of reference for them, nor any other reason for which the study of nature must be undertaken than for the sake of the distinction between goods and evils."

It follows, then, according to Chrysippus, that the account of nature is at once both prior to and posterior to ethics — or rather, the reversal of order is altogether impossible to sustain, if that which comes after is to be ranked after matters none of which can be grasped apart from it. And the contradiction is plain: on the one hand he posits the physical account as the foundation of the account of goods and evils, while on the other he bids that it be handed down not first but last of all those subjects.

But if someone should say that Chrysippus has written, in his work On the Use of Reason, that "one who first takes up logic need not abstain altogether from the rest, but must take a share of those other subjects too, as far as is given," he will speak the truth, but will only confirm the charge; for Chrysippus contradicts himself, at one point bidding that the account concerning the gods be taken up last of all, on the ground that it is for this reason even called an 'initiation,' and at another point saying that a share of this too must be taken up along with the first subjects — for the order is simply destroyed, if one must take a share of everything in everything.

But the greater point is this: having made the account concerning the gods the foundation of the account of goods and evils, he does not bid that those who begin the study of ethics start from this, but rather that they take a share of it, as far as is given, while engaged with the other, and only afterward move on to this from those other subjects — apart from which, he says, there is no possible starting point or approach to it at all.

As for arguing on the opposite side of a question, he says he does not disapprove of it in general, but advises that it be used with caution, as in the law courts — not with the aim of advocacy, but so as to dissolve its persuasiveness. "For those," he says, "who suspend judgment about everything, it is fitting to do this, and it serves their purpose; but for those who are producing in their pupils the kind of knowledge by which we are to live in consistency with ourselves, it is necessary to instill and drill in the opposite doctrines, from beginning to end, in those who are being introduced to philosophy — and on these occasions there is also opportunity to recall the opposing arguments, dissolving their persuasiveness, just as is done in the law courts." These are his very words.

Now that it is absurd for him to suppose that philosophers ought to state the opposing argument not for the sake of advocacy but, like pleaders at law, doing harm to it — as though contending not for the truth but for victory — this has been said against him elsewhere. But that he himself, not in a few places but in many, has constructed the arguments opposed to what he approves with such vigor, and with such seriousness and ambition, that it is not easy for everyone to discern which side he really favors — this the Stoics themselves say, in admiration of the man's cleverness; and they suppose that Carneades said nothing of his own, but merely took his starting points from what Chrysippus had undertaken to argue on the opposite side, and attacked his arguments from there, often murmuring, "Unhappy man, your own strength will destroy you" — as though Chrysippus were giving great advantages against himself to those who wished to unsettle and slander his doctrines.

As for what he published Against Custom, they are so proud and boastful about it that they say the arguments of all the Academics put together, heaped into one, are not worthy to be compared with what Chrysippus wrote to discredit the senses. This is indeed a sign either of their inexperience or of their self-love in saying so. But this much is true: when he wished, in turn, to speak on behalf of Custom and the senses, he became weaker than himself, and his second treatise was feebler than the first — so that he is at odds with himself, on the one hand always bidding that the opposing arguments be set forth not by way of advocacy but with an indication that they are false, and on the other hand being, with regard to his own doctrines, a more formidable prosecutor than advocate — urging others to be on their guard against arguments on the opposite side, as distracting one's grasp of the truth, while he himself composes, with more ambition than the arguments that confirm our grasp, the very arguments that destroy it.

And yet that he himself fears this very thing, he shows plainly in the fourth book On Lives, writing as follows: "Nor should the opposing arguments be admitted just as they happen to come, nor should the opposing plausibilities be accepted, but one must be on guard lest, being distracted by them, men let go their grasp of the truth — being unable either to hear the solutions adequately, or, having grasped them, to shake them off easily; since even those who hold fast to custom and to the objects of sense-perception and other things derived from the senses readily let these go when they are distracted by the questions of the Megarics, and by many other more powerful questions besides."

I would gladly, then, ask the Stoics whether they think the questions of the Megarics are more powerful than those which Chrysippus wrote against custom in six books, or whether this must be asked of Chrysippus himself. For consider what he has written about the Megaric argument in his work On the Use of Reason: "Something of the same kind has happened also in the case of the argument of Stilpo and Menedemus; for though these men had become greatly renowned for their wisdom, their argument has now turned to their reproach, on the ground that the one kind of arguer is somewhat coarse, and the other openly indulges in sophistry."

Then, my good sir, these very arguments — at which you scoff, and which you call reproaches to those who pose them, as having their badness plain to see — you nevertheless fear that they may distract some from their grasp of the truth; while you yourself, writing so many books against Custom, to which — whatever you discovered — you kept adding, in your ambition to surpass Arcesilaus, did you expect to disturb none of your readers? For he does not employ his arguments against Custom in a bare, unadorned way, but, as in a lawsuit, sharing in some passion, he repeatedly says that it talks nonsense and babbles emptily.

So that he might leave no possibility of denying that he argues on both sides, in the Physical Theses he has written as follows: "It will also be possible, even while grasping something firmly, to argue the opposite side, providing the support inherent in it, and sometimes, grasping neither side firmly, to state what can be said on each side." And in his work On the Use of Reason, having said that one ought not to use the power of reason for purposes to which it is not suited, just as one ought not to use weapons for such purposes, he adds this...

for the discovery of truths one must use it, and for their kinship, but not for the opposite — though many do this to many people?” meaning, presumably, the Suspenders of Judgment. But they, at least, apprehending neither side, argue on each side alike: as though, if anything were apprehensible, truth would provide its own apprehension only, or best, in that way. But you, who accuse them of this, yourself write the opposite of what you apprehend about Custom, and dissuade others from doing the same thing with advocacy, while confessedly using the power of reason for useless and harmful ends out of sheer ambition to play the young man. “Correct action,” they say, “is a command of law, and error is a prohibition of law; hence the law forbids the base many things but commands nothing, since they cannot act rightly.”

But who does not know that for one who cannot act rightly it is impossible not to err? So they make the law contradict itself, commanding what people are unable to do and forbidding what they are unable to refrain from: for the man who cannot be temperate cannot help being intemperate, and the man who cannot be wise cannot help being foolish. Yet they themselves say that to forbid is one thing, and to command another, and to say is yet another: for the one who says “do not steal” says precisely that, “do not steal,” and thereby forbids stealing, and commands not stealing. So the law will forbid the base nothing, if indeed it commands nothing. And they say that the physician commands his pupil to cut and cauterize, by omission of the proper time and measure, and that the musician commands him to play the lyre and sing, by omission of the tuneful and harmonious; and that is why they punish those who do these things unskillfully and badly — for the command itself was right, but they did not carry it out rightly.

So too, when the wise man commands his servant to say and do something, even if the servant does not do it at the right time nor in the way he ought, and is punished for it, it is clear that the wise man was commanding a right action, not something intermediate. And if the wise commit intermediate acts to the base, what prevents the commands of law from being of that sort too? Moreover, according to Chrysippus himself, impulse is a man’s reason commanding him to act, as he has written in his treatise On Law. Then aversion, too, is reason forbidding; and avoidance is reasoned avoidance; and caution, accordingly, is reason forbidding to the wise man — for caution is proper to the wise, not to the base.

If, then, the wise man’s reason is one thing and the law another, the wise possess in their caution a reason that conflicts with the law; but if law is nothing other than the wise man’s reason, then a law forbidding has been found, one that forbids the wise from doing the things they are cautious about. “Nothing,” says Chrysippus, “is useful to the base, nor does the base man have need or want of anything.” But having said this in the first book of On Right Actions, he says again that “usefulness and favor extend to intermediate things” — none of which is useful, according to them. And further he says that nothing is proper or fitting to the base man, in these words: “in the same way, nothing is foreign to the good man, and nothing is proper to the base man, since the one is good and the other bad.”

How then does he wear us out again, in practically every book of physics and ethics — by Zeus! — writing that “we become dear to ourselves the moment we are born, and to our own parts and offspring”? And in the first book On Justice: “Even the beasts,” he says, “have become attached, in due measure, to their own offspring — except fish, whose young are nourished by themselves.” But there is neither perception where nothing is perceptible, nor attachment where nothing is proper to one: for attachment seems to be a perception and apprehension of what is proper. And this doctrine follows from the most authoritative principles; and Chrysippus, even though he has written much against it, is clearly committed to the view that neither is one vice greater than another vice, nor one error than another error, nor one virtue than another virtue, nor one right action than another right action. This is the man who says, in the third book On Nature: “Just as it befits Zeus to take pride in himself and in his life, and to think great thoughts and, if one may put it so, to hold his neck high and let his hair grow long and speak in a lofty manner, living a life worthy of such lofty speech,

so all good men have a right to these things equally, being outdone by Zeus in nothing.” Yet he himself, again, in the third book On Justice, says that those who posit pleasure as the end destroy justice, while those who say it is merely a good, and not the end, do not destroy it; and here are his very words: “For perhaps, if pleasure is left as a good, but not as the end, while what is fine is also choiceworthy for its own sake, we could preserve justice, leaving the fine and the just as a greater good than pleasure.” But if only the fine is good, then the man who declares pleasure a good errs, but errs less than the man who also makes it the end: this second man destroys justice, that first man preserves it; and on Chrysippus’s own reckoning, community and fellowship are then utterly gone and lost, whereas the other view leaves room for kindness and benevolence.

Further, as for his saying, in his work On Zeus, that “virtues grow and advance,” I let that pass, lest I seem to be catching at mere words — though Chrysippus himself bites bitterly at Plato and the others on this very point of terminology. But when he bids us not to praise every act done in accordance with virtue, he thereby implies some difference among right actions; for he speaks thus in his work On Zeus: “Since acts in accordance with the virtues exist, it is proper that the things that are brought forward, and among these too, — for instance, to stretch out one’s finger bravely, and to hold back with self-control from a dying old woman, and to hear without over-hastiness that three and four do not make seven — reveals a certain frigidity in the man who undertakes to praise and extol people for such things.”

Similar remarks are made in the third book On the Gods: “For I think,” he says, “that praise, too, will be alienated by such occurrences arising from virtue — for instance, holding back from a dying old woman, and steadfastly enduring the bite of a fly.” What other accuser, then, does this man await for his own doctrines? For if the man who praises such things is frigid, then surely far more frigid is the man who counts each of these things a right action, and indeed a great one, the greatest one. For if it is equal to bear the bite of a fly bravely and to hold back temperately from the old woman, I think it makes no difference whether the sage is praised for the one or for the other. Further, in the second book On Friendship, teaching that friendships ought not to be dissolved over every fault, he uses these very words: “For it is fitting that some faults be altogether passed over, others receive only slight attention, others a greater degree of it, and others still be judged worthy of complete dissolution.”

But something more telling than this: in the same passage he says that “we shall associate more closely with some, less closely with others, so that some are friends to a greater, others to a lesser degree; and as this variation becomes considerable, some become worthy of this much friendship, others of that much, and some will be judged worthy of this much trust and the like, others of that much.” What else has he done here but leave great differences among these things too? Moreover, in his work On the Fine, in support of the demonstration that only the fine is good, he uses arguments of this kind: “The good is choiceworthy, the choiceworthy is pleasing, the pleasing is praiseworthy, the praiseworthy is fine”;

and again, “The good is a cause for joy, what is a cause for joy is solemn, what is solemn is fine.” But these arguments conflict with the passage above: for if every good thing is praiseworthy, then holding back temperately from the old woman would be praiseworthy too; or else not every good thing is either solemn or a cause for joy — and then his argument collapses. For how can it be that for others to praise such things is frigid, while for the sage himself to rejoice and take pride in such things is not ridiculous? So he is like this in many places; but in his controversies against others he cares least of all about saying nothing contrary to and dissonant with himself. At any rate, in his work Against Plato’s Protrepticus,

taking Plato to task for saying that for one who has neither learned nor knows how to live, it is more profitable not to live, he says, word for word: “For such an argument both conflicts with itself and is least of all protreptic (exhortatory). For, in the first place, by showing that it is best for us not to live, and in a sense urging us to die, he has thereby urged us toward certain other things rather than toward philosophizing — for it is not possible to philosophize without being alive, nor, if one does not go on living for a long time, to become wise, however badly and carelessly one has lived.”

And going on, he says that “even the base ought to remain alive”; then, word for word: “For in the first place, virtue in itself is nothing as regards our living, and just so, vice is nothing as regards our needing to depart from life.” And indeed there is no need to unroll other books to display Chrysippus’s contradiction with himself: within these very same works he is found now praising Antisthenes’ dictum that one must acquire either sense or a noose, and Tyrtaeus’s line, “before he comes to the bounds of valor or of death” — and yet what else do these mean, except that not living is more profitable than living, for the wicked and the senseless?

and elsewhere, correcting Theognis, he says: “He ought not to have said, ‘One must, in fleeing poverty,’ but rather, ‘one must, in fleeing vice, hurl oneself into the deep-yawning sea, or from towering cliffs, Cyrnus.’” What else, then, would he seem to be doing but writing in himself the same doctrines and matters that he erases when others write them — finding fault with Plato for demonstrating that not living is more profitable than living badly and ignorantly, while advising Theognis to hurl himself off a cliff or drown himself in order to escape vice?

In praising Antisthenes for driving those who lack sense to the noose, he was condemning himself, since he had said that vice is nothing as regards freeing us from life. And in his work Against Plato himself On Justice, right from the start he leaps into the argument about the gods and says: “It was not right to deter Cephalus from injustice by fear of the gods; for such an argument is easily discredited, and, being led toward the opposite, exposed to many diversions and plausible counter-arguments, the discourse on divine punishments is no different from the bogey-women Akko and Alphito, by which women keep children from misbehaving.”

Yet having thus torn Plato’s views to shreds, he elsewhere praises them again, and often quotes these lines of Euripides: “But it is true — even if one mocks the saying — that Zeus and the gods look upon mortal sufferings”; and likewise, in the first book On Justice, he has cited these lines of Hesiod: “Upon them the son of Cronus sent a great woe from heaven, famine together with plague, and the people wasted away.”

“This,” he says, “is what the gods do, so that, when the wicked are punished, the rest, using these as examples, may be less inclined to attempt such a thing.” Again, in the treatise On Justice, having first suggested that those who posit pleasure as a good but not as the end can nonetheless preserve justice, he sets this down, word for word: “For perhaps, if pleasure is left as a good but not as the end, while what is fine is also choiceworthy for its own sake, we could preserve justice, leaving the fine and the just as a greater good than pleasure.” So much, in this passage, about pleasure. But in his arguments against Plato, accusing him of apparently leaving health as a good, he says: “Not only justice, but also greatness of soul and temperance and all the other virtues are destroyed, if we leave pleasure, or health, or anything else that is not fine, as a good.”

Now what ought to be said on Plato’s behalf has been written elsewhere, against him; but here the contradiction is plain to see, since in one place he says that if one posits pleasure as a good along with the fine, justice is preserved, while in another he charges that those who leave anything other than the fine as a good destroy all the virtues. And so that he might leave no defense open even for these inconsistencies, writing against Aristotle on justice, he says: “He is not right in saying that, pleasure being the end, justice is destroyed, and together with justice each of the other virtues as well; for justice is indeed truly destroyed by them,

but the other virtues are in no way prevented from existing, even if not choiceworthy for their own sakes, yet at least as being goods and virtues that will result.” Then he names each of them by name. But it is better to take up his own words: “For,” he says, “if pleasure appears as the end according to such reasoning, then it seems to me that nothing of the sort is included in it at all; and so one must say that none of the virtues is choiceworthy for its own sake, nor any of the vices to be avoided for its own sake,

but that all these things must be referred to the underlying goal. Nothing, however, will prevent bravery and prudence and self-control and endurance, and virtues akin to these, from being among the goods, according to them, while the opposite qualities are to be avoided.” Who, then, has ever been bolder in argument than this man, who has charged two of the very best philosophers — the one, that he destroys every virtue by leaving only the fine as good; the other, that, pleasure being the end, he thinks not every virtue is preserved without justice?

For it is a marvelous freedom, when discussing the very same matters, to charge Aristotle with positing certain things, and then again to destroy those same things himself, when accusing Plato. And further, in his Demonstrations concerning Justice, he says explicitly that “every right action is also a lawful act and a just act; and what is done in accordance with self-control, or endurance, or prudence, or bravery, is a right action, and so it is also a just act.” How, then, does he not also leave out justice, when he leaves out prudence and bravery and self-control, in the case of all those who act rightly in the aforementioned virtues and are thereby acting justly?

...injustice, being a corruption and internal faction of the soul, does not, even in those who possess it, lose its power, but sets a wicked man at odds with himself and dashes him together and throws him into turmoil — Chrysippus, finding fault with this, says: "It is said absurdly that a man wrongs himself, for injustice is directed toward another, not toward oneself." Yet forgetting this, he again says in his Proofs concerning Justice that "the wrongdoer is wronged by himself, and wrongs himself whenever he wrongs another, becoming for himself the cause of his own transgression and harming himself beyond his desert." In his work Against Plato he made these statements about injustice being said to be directed not toward oneself but toward another: "For unjust men are not so constituted individually, but rather from a plurality of such men who say the opposite" — and injustice being taken in another way, as it would be among a number of people so disposed toward one another, whereas toward a single person, with no such relation extending, only insofar as one behaves so toward one's neighbors is it so.

But in the Proofs he has posed arguments of this sort about the unjust man wronging even himself: "The law forbids becoming an accessory to a transgression, and to do wrong is a transgression; therefore whoever becomes an accessory to himself in wrongdoing transgresses against himself; and whoever transgresses against a single person also wrongs that person; therefore whoever wrongs anyone whatsoever also wrongs himself." And again: "Error belongs to the class of harms, and everyone who errs, errs against himself; therefore everyone who errs harms himself undeservedly; and if this is so, he also wrongs himself." And further, in this way too: "He who is harmed by another harms himself, and harms himself undeservedly; but this was what it meant to be wronged; therefore he who is wronged, even by anyone whatsoever, wrongs himself."

As for the account of goods and evils which he himself introduces and approves, he says it is "most in accord with life and above all in contact with our innate preconceptions" — this he stated in the third book of his Exhortations; but in the first book he says that "this account draws a man away from all other things, as being nothing to us and contributing nothing to happiness." Observe, then, how consistent he is with himself: the very man who declares that living, health, freedom from pain, and the soundness of the sense organs — things we ask of the gods — are nothing to us, at the same time asserts that this position is most in accord with life and with our common preconceptions.

But, so that there might be no denying that he contradicts himself, in the third book On Justice he has said this: "Wherefore, on account of the excess both of the greatness and of the beauty, we seem to be speaking of fictions and not in accordance with man and human nature." Is there, then, any way one could more clearly confess to contradicting oneself than this man does, when about the very things which he says, on account of their excess, seem to be fictions and to be spoken beyond man and beyond human nature, he asserts that these are in accord with life and above all in contact with our innate preconceptions? He declares vice to be the essence of misfortune, writing and insisting in every book, physical and ethical, that "to live according to vice is the same as to live in misfortune."

Yet in the third book On Nature, having first said that "it is more profitable to live foolishly than not to live at all, even if one is never going to become wise," he adds: "For such are the goods that belong to men, that in a sense the evils among the intermediate things take precedence." Now that, having said elsewhere that nothing is profitable for fools, he here says that living foolishly is profitable, I let pass. But of the things called "intermediate" among the Stoics, being neither evils nor goods, when he says that evils take precedence, he is saying nothing other than that evils take precedence over things that are not evils, and that being unfortunate is more profitable than not being unfortunate — and he holds that not being unfortunate is less profitable than being unfortunate; and if less profitable, then also more harmful; so that not being unfortunate turns out, on his view, to be more harmful than being unfortunate.

Wishing, then, to smooth over this absurdity, he adds concerning the evils: "But it is not these that take precedence, but reason, in accordance with which it is more fitting to live, even if we are to be foolish." Now, in the first place, he calls "evils" vice and the things that partake of vice, and nothing else; and vice is a rational thing, or rather a mistaken reason; so living with reason while being foolish is nothing other than living with vice.

In the next place, living while being foolish is living in misfortune, since one is so. In what respect, then, does this take precedence over the intermediate things? For he will surely not say that being unfortunate takes precedence with a view to being fortunate. But, they say, Chrysippus does not think that either remaining in life for the good, or departing from it for the wicked, ought to be measured by these things at all, but by the things that are intermediate and in accordance with nature; wherefore it sometimes becomes fitting for the fortunate to remove themselves from life, and for the unfortunate, in turn, to remain in it.

What, then, could be a greater contradiction of the principle of choice and avoidance than this — that it should be fitting for those who are supremely fortunate to withdraw from the goods present to them because of the absence of things indifferent? And yet none of the things indifferent is, on their view, either to be chosen or to be avoided; only the good is to be chosen, and only the evil to be avoided — so they hold. So it follows, on their own account, that the calculations governing actions are made with reference neither to things to be chosen nor to things to be avoided, but that men aim at other things which they neither avoid nor choose, and live and die with reference to these. Chrysippus agrees that goods differ from evils in every respect, and this is necessary, if the one sort makes men wretched in the extreme the moment they are present, and the other sort makes them supremely fortunate.

He says that goods and evils are perceptible by the senses, writing in the earlier book On the End as follows: "For that goods and evils are perceptible, this too makes it possible to say; for not only the passions are perceptible, together with their forms — such as grief and fear and the like — but also

theft and adultery and things of that sort can be perceived, and in general folly and cowardice and not a few other vices, and not only joy and acts of kindness and many other right actions, but also prudence and courage and the rest of the virtues." Setting aside the other absurdity in this, who would not agree that it conflicts with their doctrine of the sage who is wise without knowing it?

For if the good is perceptible and differs greatly from evil, then that a man passing from wickedness to virtue should be unaware of this, and not perceive that virtue is present in him, but suppose that vice is still present in him — how is this not most absurd? For either no one who possesses all the virtues can fail to notice or disbelieve it, or else the difference between virtue and vice, and between happiness and misfortune, and between the noblest life and the most shameful, is small indeed and altogether hard to discern, if a man who has acquired these instead of those can remain unaware of himself.

There is a single treatise, On Lives, in four books. In the fourth of these he says that the sage is a man of leisure and of few affairs, and one who minds his own business; and this is his statement: "For I think that the prudent man is a man of leisure and of few affairs and minds his own business, since minding one's own business and being a man of few affairs are both fine things."

Much the same he has said in the treatise On Things Choiceworthy for Their Own Sake, in these words: "For indeed the life of quietude appears in truth to have something free from danger and secure about it, though not all people are quite able to perceive this." That this does not clash with Epicurus, who does away with providence through his doctrine of the god's freedom from all business, is clear. But Chrysippus himself, in the first book On Lives, says that "the sage willingly undertakes kingship, making money from it; and if he himself cannot be king, he will live with a king and go on campaign together with a king, as was the case with Idanthyrsus the Scythian

or Leucon the Pontic." And I will set beside this also this other statement of his, so that we may see whether, as from the lowest and highest strings some concord arises, so too the life of a man who chooses leisure and having few affairs is in harmony with then riding alongside Scythians and doing the business of the tyrants of the Bosporus out of some sort of necessity: "For that he will also go on campaign with rulers and live with them, let us examine again

once we have taken up these points — some not even suspecting this, because of similar reckonings, and we ourselves also setting these aside for similar reasons." And a little further on: "and not only with those who have made some progress and have been raised in a certain kind of training and habits, such as with Leucon and Idanthyrsus." Some blame Callisthenes for having sailed to join Alexander, hoping to restore Olynthus,

as Aristotle hoped for Stagira; and they praise Ephorus and Xenocrates and Menedemus for declining Alexander's invitation. But Chrysippus, for the sake of profit, thrusts the sage headlong into Panticapaeum and the desolation of the Scythians. For that he does this for the sake of business and profit he has already made plain, having proposed that there are three sources of income most fitting for the sage: that from kingship, that from friends, and third besides these,

that from sophistry. And yet in many places he wears one out with praising the lines: 'For what do mortals need, save these two things alone — the fruit of Demeter and a draught of flowing water?' But in the books On Nature he says that "the sage, were he to lose the greatest estate, would think he had lost but a single drachma." So, having exalted him in the one place and puffed him up, he then in the other casts him back down again into wage-earning and sophistry —

for he says that the sage will ask for and take his fee, in one case immediately at the start, in the other after some time has passed for the pupil, which he says is the more considerate way, though it is safer to take it in advance, since the subject admits of wrongs being done. And he speaks thus: "Not all sensible men exact their fee in the same way, but variously, as the occasion offers, not promising to make their pupils good, and that within a year,

but rather that whatever pertains to themselves they will do, up to the agreed time." And again, proceeding further: "He will also know the right occasion — whether he ought to take the fee at once, together with the enrollment, as most have done, or also allow them time, since this subject admits of wrongdoing more than most, though it might seem the more considerate course." And how could the sage be a despiser of money, who under written contract hands over virtue for silver, and even when it is not paid, exacts his little fee, as one who has done his part;

or is he superior to harm, only guarding against being wronged in the matter of his little fee? For no one is wronged who is not harmed; hence, having declared elsewhere that the sage is not wronged, he here says that this subject admits of some wrongdoing. In the treatise On the Republic he says that citizens will do nothing, and make no preparation, for the sake of pleasure;

and he praises Euripides for producing these lines: 'For what do mortals need, save these two things alone — the fruit of Demeter and a draught of flowing water?' Then, going on a little from this, he praises Diogenes for masturbating in public and saying to those present, 'Would that I could likewise rub away my hunger by rubbing my belly.' What sense, then, is there

in praising, in the same breath, the man who casts out pleasure and the man who does such things and engages in such shameful conduct for pleasure's sake? For having written, in the books On Nature, that nature has produced many animals for the sake of beauty, taking delight and rejoicing in variety, and having added a most irrational argument, that "the peacock came to be for the sake of its tail, on account of its beauty," he then, again,

in the treatise On the Republic, rebukes with youthful vehemence those who keep peacocks and nightingales, as though legislating against the lawgiver of the universe and mocking nature, who delights in beauty in such creatures, to which the sage gives no place in his city. For how is it not absurd to blame those who raise creatures whose begetting he praises as the work of providence? So then, in the fifth book On Nature, having said

that "bedbugs usefully wake us up, and mice make us turn to arranging each thing carefully, and it is likely that nature loves beauty, delighting in variety," he has said this word for word: "This would be most manifest above all in the tail of the peacock; for there it is evident that the animal came to be for the sake of its tail and not the reverse, and that the female, at any rate, followed the male

as he came to be so." But in the treatise On the Republic, having said that "we are close to painting even our privies," he says a little later that some people beautify their farmland with climbing vines and myrtles, and keep peacocks and doves and partridges so that they may cluck for them, and nightingales. I should be glad to learn from him what he thinks about bees and honey; for was it not consistent,

having said that bedbugs came to be usefully, to say that bees came to be uselessly? But if he grants these a place in his city, why does he bar the citizens from the things that give delight to hearing and sight? In general, just as it would be absurd for a man to blame his fellow-diners for making use of desserts and wine and delicacies, while praising the host who invited them to this and provided these very things,

so too is he absurd, who on the one hand praises providence for having provided fish and birds and honey and wine, while on the other hand blaming those who do not forgo these and are not content with 'the fruit of Demeter and draughts of flowing water,' which are present and by nature suited to nourish us — he seems to take no account of the fact that he is contradicting himself. Moreover, in the treatise Exhortations, having said that "intercourse with mothers or sisters or

daughters, and eating certain food, and going up to a temple after childbirth or a death, have been irrationally condemned, and that one must look to the beasts," he says, "and draw evidence from what is done by them, that none of such things is out of place or contrary to nature; for the placing of the examples of other animals side by side with these matters serves the timely purpose of showing that neither their coupling, nor their giving birth, nor their

dying within temples defiles the divine." And again in the fifth book On Nature he says: "Hesiod does well to forbid urinating into rivers and springs; and one must all the more abstain from urinating toward an altar or a statue of a god; for it is not reasonable, if dogs and donkeys do this, and little infant children, that no attention or reasoning

...having such-and-such qualities." It is absurd, then, that in the one case it should be fitting to appeal to the observation of irrational animals, but here that one should reason it out instead.

To provide release from the impression that our impulses are compelled by external causes, some philosophers construct a certain "adventitious" motion within the ruling faculty, a motion that becomes most evident in cases involving indistinguishable alternatives. For when, of two things equally possible and alike in every respect, it is necessary to take one, with no cause inclining us to the one rather than the other because there is no difference between them, this adventitious power of the soul, taking an inclination from itself, cuts through the impasse.

Arguing against these men, as though they were doing violence to nature by introducing the uncaused, Chrysippus in many places sets down this argument: "Can the knucklebone, or the balance, or many other things that cannot at different times fall or incline differently, do so without some cause and difference, either wholly within themselves or arising from external circumstances? For the uncaused is altogether nonexistent, and so is the spontaneous. But in these 'adventitious' motions fabricated and spoken of by some, hidden causes underlie them and escape our notice, leading the impulse now to one side, now to the other."

These, then, are among the best-known of the things he has often said. But what he himself has said, in turn, contrary to these — though not so readily at hand — I shall set forth in his own words.

In his treatise On Judging, having supposed that two runners finish a dead heat together, he raises the difficulty of what it is proper for the judge to do: "Is it permitted," he asks, "for the judge to award the palm to whichever of the two he pleases? And if they happen to be closer acquaintances of his, is it permitted, as it were, to grant him something of his own in this case? Or rather, in a way — since the palm has become common property of both — is he to give it as if by some hidden lot, following the inclination, as chance dictates? I mean the chance inclination of the sort that occurs when, two similar drachmas being set before us, alike in every other respect, we incline toward one of them and take it."

In the sixth book On Appropriate Acts, having said that "there are certain matters not worth much trouble or attention," he holds that in such cases one ought to let the matter go and, allotting the choice to the mind's chance inclination, leave the decision to it. "For example," he says, "if, among men testing two drachmas up to a certain point, some should judge this one to be the good one and others that one, and it were necessary to take just one of them, then, giving up further inquiry, we shall take whichever we happen to, allotting between them by some hidden reckoning — even if we thereby take the worse of the two." In these passages, then, sortition and the mind's chance inclination introduce the taking of indifferent things without any cause whatsoever.

In the third book On Dialectic, having remarked that "Plato took dialectic seriously, and so did Aristotle, and after them those down to Polemo and Strato, and above all Socrates," and having exclaimed that "one might well be willing to share even in the errors of men so numerous and of such stature," he adds, word for word: "For if they had spoken of these matters only in passing, one might perhaps have made light of the point; but since they spoke of it so carefully, on the ground that it is among the greatest and most necessary of the faculties, it is not plausible that men who are, on the whole, of the sort we take them to be, should go so far wrong in this."

What then of you yourself, one might ask — do you never cease contending with and refuting men so many and so great, on the ground that you think they go wrong in the most authoritative and weightiest matters? For surely they did not write earnestly about dialectic while writing about first principles, the end of life, the gods, and justice only in passing and in jest — the very matters in which you call their reasoning blind, self-contradictory, and guilty of countless other errors.

"Malicious delight at another's misfortune," he says in one place, "does not exist, since none of the refined take pleasure in others' evils, and none of the base take pleasure at all." Yet in the second book On the Good, having explained envy as "pain at another's goods, felt somehow by those who wish to humble their neighbors so that they themselves may excel," he goes on to add the matter of malicious delight: "Continuous with this, malicious delight at another's misfortune arises in those who wish their neighbors humbled for the same reasons; but when they are turned aside instead by other natural impulses, pity arises." Here, then, he plainly leaves malicious delight standing as real, alongside envy and pity — though elsewhere he says it does not exist, any more than hatred of wickedness or love of shameful gain does.

Though he has said in many places that "over a longer span of time men are no happier, but just as much so, and equally, as those who partake of happiness for a single indivisible instant," he has again said in many places that "it would not be proper even to stretch out a finger for the sake of a momentary wisdom, as though it were a flash of lightning passing by." It will suffice to cite what he wrote on this subject in the sixth book of the Ethical Questions. Having first said that "not every good falls equally into joy, nor every right action into solemn pride," he adds: "For indeed, if one were to possess wisdom for only a single instant, or as one's last, it would not be proper even to extend a finger for the sake of a wisdom that would be present in that way" — even though, over a longer span of time, men are no happier, and eternal happiness is no more choiceworthy than momentary happiness.

Now if he held wisdom to be a good that produces happiness, as Epicurus does, one would only need to seize on the absurdity and paradox of the doctrine itself. But since, according to him, wisdom is not distinct from happiness but is happiness itself, how does it not contradict itself to say that momentary happiness is equally choiceworthy as eternal happiness, and yet that momentary happiness is worth nothing?

"The virtues," he says, "follow reciprocally upon one another — not only in that whoever has one has them all, but also in that whoever performs any single act in accordance with one virtue performs it in accordance with all; for he says that no man is perfect who does not possess all the virtues, and no act is perfect that is not performed in accordance with all the virtues." And yet in the sixth book of the Ethical Questions Chrysippus says that the excellent man does not always act with courage, nor the base man always with cowardice, but rather that, as various impressions come upon them, one stands firm in his judgments while the other abandons them. "It is plausible," he says, "that the base man is not always intemperate either." If, then, acting courageously is the same as exercising courage, and acting cowardly the same as exercising cowardice, they contradict themselves in saying, on the one hand, that whoever possesses the virtues and vices acts in accordance with all of them at once, and, on the other, that the excellent man does not always act courageously, nor the base man always cowardly.

He defines rhetoric as an art concerned with order and the arrangement of well-composed speech; and further, in the first book, he has also written this: "I think that in speeches, too, one must attend not only to a liberal and unaffected order, but also to the delivery proper to them, in keeping with the fitting modulations of the voice and the gestures of face and hands." Yet this same man, so ambitious about style here, says again in the same book, discussing the clash of vowels: "Not only must these be avoided by those who hold to the better course, but also certain kinds of obscurity and omission and, by Zeus, solecisms — over which not a few others would be ashamed." To concede, then, at one moment that speakers should arrange their speech with propriety down to the gestures of hand and mouth, and at another that one need not attend to omissions and obscurities, nor be ashamed of solecisms — this is the mark of a man saying whatever occurs to him.

And in the Physical Theses, having urged, concerning matters that require experience and empirical inquiry, that one keep silent unless one has something better and clearer to say — "so that," he says, "we may not, like Plato, suppose that liquid nourishment is carried to the lung and dry nourishment to the stomach, nor fall into other blunders of the same kind" —

I think that to censure others and then fall oneself into the very faults one censures, without guarding against it, is the greatest of self-contradictions and the most shameful of blunders. And yet he himself says that the combinations formed from ten propositions exceed a million in number, without either investigating the matter carefully himself or inquiring into the truth from those experienced in it. And yet Plato has the most eminent physicians as his witnesses — Hippocrates, Philistion, Dioxippus the Hippocratic — and among the poets Euripides, Alcaeus, Eupolis, and Eratosthenes — all of whom say that drink passes through the lung; but Chrysippus is refuted by all the mathematicians, among them Hipparchus, who demonstrates that the error in his calculation was enormous, since he makes the affirmative combinations of compound propositions one hundred and three thousand and forty-nine, and the negative combinations thirty-one thousand nine hundred and fifty-two.

Some of the older writers said that what happens to a man who has sour wine, unable to sell it either as vinegar or as wine, happens also to Zeno: for his "preferred" thing has, in his system, a status that is neither that of a good nor that of an indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter still harder to settle. For at one time he says: "those who count wealth, health, freedom from pain, and bodily soundness as nothing, and do not hold fast to such things, are mad"; yet at another time, citing Hesiod's line "Work, Perses, scion of the gods," he declares that it would be madness to counsel the opposite — "Do not work, Perses, scion of the gods."

"And the wise man," he says in his work On Lives, "will consort even with kings for the sake of profit, and will play the sophist for money, taking payment in advance from some of his pupils and making agreements with others." And in the seventh book of the On Appropriate Acts: "and he will even turn a somersault for a talent, if paid to do so." Yet in the first book On Goods he in a way concedes, and grants to those who wish it, that the "preferred" things may be called goods and their opposites evils, in these words: "It is possible, if one wishes, to call one of these good and the other bad in accordance with such variations, provided one keeps to the actual facts and does not wander off in some other direction — not going wrong as to their meaning, but in other respects following ordinary usage in naming them." Thus, having here drawn the "preferred" close to the good and all but merged the two, he says again elsewhere: "none of these things is of any concern to us at all, but reason draws us away and turns us from all such things" — for this he has written in the first book of the Exhortations.

And in the third book On Nature he says: "some men are counted blessed for being kings and being rich, as though one were counted blessed for using golden chamber-pots and golden fringes; whereas for the good man, to lose his property is like losing a drachma, and to fall ill is like stubbing one's toe." Hence he has filled not only virtue but also providence with these contradictions. For on the one hand virtue will appear utterly petty and foolish if it busies itself over such trifles, bidding the wise man sail to the Bosporus and turn somersaults for their sake; and on the other hand Zeus becomes ridiculous, if he delights in being called "Ktesios" (Possessor), "Epikarpios" (Giver of Increase), and "Charidotes" (Giver of Grace), seeing that he evidently grants golden chamber-pots and golden fringes to the base, and things worth a mere drachma to the good, whenever they grow rich by the providence of Zeus. Still more ridiculous is Apollo, if he sits pronouncing oracles about golden fringes and chamber-pots, and about release from stubbed toes.

Moreover, by their own proof they make the contradiction still more manifest. For whatever, they say, can be used well or badly is neither good nor bad. But all fools use wealth, health, and bodily strength badly; therefore none of these is a good. If, then, god does not give virtue to men, but the noble is a matter of free choice, while he gives wealth and health apart from virtue, he gives them not to men who will use them well but badly — that is, harmfully, shamefully, and ruinously. And yet, if the gods are able to bestow virtue, they are not good if they fail to bestow it; and if they are unable to make men good, they are unable to benefit them at all, since nothing else is either good or beneficial. As for judging as superior those who have become good in some other way, by virtue or by power — that amounts to nothing, for the good judge even the gods by virtue and power; so that the gods benefit men no more than they are benefited by them.

And indeed, Chrysippus declares neither himself nor any of his acquaintances or teachers to be a sage. What, then, do they think of everyone else, but exactly what they say — that all are mad, foolish, impious, lawless, that they have reached the utmost pitch of misfortune and every kind of wretchedness? Are our affairs, then, faring so wretchedly, really governed by the providence of the gods? At any rate, if the gods should change their minds and wish to harm us, to do us evil, to pervert us, and to grind us down further, they could not put us in a worse state than we are in now, since Chrysippus himself declares that our life leaves no room for any excess of vice or wretchedness beyond what it already has — so that, if life could find a voice, it would say the words of Heracles: "I am full of evils now; there is no place left to put another." What statements, then, could one find more at odds with each other than Chrysippus's statements about the gods and about men — saying that the one class exercises providence in the best way possible, while the other fares in the worst way possible?

Some of the Pythagoreans bring a charge against him for writing, in his work On Justice, concerning roosters, that "they have come into being usefully; for they wake us, and pick out scorpions, and rouse us for battle, instilling in us a certain zeal for courage; nevertheless we must eat these too, lest the number of chicks exceed our need of them." Yet he so ridicules those who bring charges on such grounds that, concerning Zeus — the Savior, the Begetter, and father of Justice, Good Order, and Peace — he writes this in the third book On the Gods: "Just as cities, when they grow too populous, send off their excess numbers to colonies and enter into wars against certain peoples, so god provides the beginnings of destruction." And he brings forward Euripides and others as witnesses, who say that the Trojan War was brought about by the gods for the sake of draining off the excess of the human race.

But let the other absurdities of these views pass — for our purpose is not to examine whatever is not well said, but only to consider the points on which they contradict themselves...

...is my present business: but observe that while he always attaches to god beautiful and humane epithets, he also attaches savage and barbarous and "Galatian" deeds. For such destructions and utter annihilations of human beings as the Trojan War wrought, and again the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, do not resemble colonizations — unless these men suppose that some cities are founded in Hades and under the earth. But

what Chrysippus makes god do to Deiotarus the Galatian is comparable: as when, several children having been born to him, wishing to leave the kingdom and the house to one, he slaughtered all the rest, just as one cuts off and lops the shoots of a vine, so that the one left might become strong and great. And yet the vinedresser does this while the shoots are still small and weak, and we ourselves, while puppies are newborn

and still blind, remove most of them, sparing the mother; but Zeus, not only permitting and looking on while they grow to maturity, but himself having begotten and reared them, then beats them to death, contriving pretexts for their destruction and ruin, when he ought rather not to have furnished the causes and origins of their birth at all. This, however, is the lesser point; the greater is this: no war arises among men without

vice, but one man is driven to conflict by love of pleasure, another by greed, another by love of glory or love of power. If, then, god brings about wars, he also brings about vices, by goading and perverting human beings. And yet he himself says, in his work On Judging, and again in the second book On the Gods, that "it is not reasonable for the divine to be held partly responsible for shameful things"; for

just as law cannot be held partly responsible for lawbreaking, nor the gods for impiety, so likewise it is not reasonable that they be held partly responsible for anything shameful. What, then, is more shameful for human beings than their destruction at one another's hands — a destruction whose origins, Chrysippus says, god himself supplies? But someone will say, by Zeus, that he again approves Euripides' saying, "if gods do anything shameful, they are not gods."

And you have said the easiest thing — to blame the gods — as though we were now doing anything other than setting his own statements and assumptions side by side with their opposites. Yet this very thing now being praised will have to be said to Chrysippus not once, nor twice, nor three times, but ten thousand times: "you have said the easiest thing — to blame the gods." For first, in the first book On Nature, likening the eternal

motion to a kykeon — stirring and mixing up now this thing, now that, among the things that come to be — he has said this: "since the administration of the whole proceeds thus, it is necessary that we be, in accordance with it, however we happen to be at any time — whether diseased contrary to our own nature, or maimed, or having become grammarians or musicians." And again a little further on: "by this same reasoning we shall say similar things about

our virtue and about our vice, and in general about the arts and the lack of arts, as I said." And a little further, removing all ambiguity: "for nothing whatever, not even the smallest particular thing, can come to be otherwise than in accordance with the common nature and its reason." And that the common nature and the common reason of nature

are fate and providence and Zeus has not escaped notice even of the Antipodes; for this is proclaimed everywhere by the Stoics themselves: and he says that Homer spoke rightly in saying "and the will of Zeus was being fulfilled," referring this to fate and to the nature of the whole, in accordance with which all things are governed. How then can it be, at once, that god is responsible for nothing shameful, and also that not even the smallest thing can come to be

otherwise than in accordance with the common nature and its reason? For among all the things that come to be, shameful things surely are included. And yet Epicurus, in some manner, twists and contrives, devising a way to free and release the voluntary from the eternal motion, so as not to leave vice unaccountable; whereas Chrysippus grants it unrestrained license, holding that it comes to be not only by

necessity, nor merely according to fate, but also according to the reason of god and according to a nature that has been made the best possible. Moreover these words too are found, stated in this very form: "since the common nature extends to all things, everything that comes to be in any way whatsoever in the whole, and in any of its parts, must come to be in accordance with that nature and its reason, in unhindered sequence; because

there is nothing external that could obstruct the administration, nor does any of the parts have any way of being moved or disposed otherwise than in accordance with the common nature." What then are the dispositions and motions of the parts? Clearly the dispositions are the vices and the diseases — avarice, love of pleasure, love of glory, cowardice, injustice; and the motions are adulteries, thefts, betrayals, murders, parricides. Of these

Chrysippus thinks that neither small nor great occurs apart from the reason of Zeus and his law and justice and providence, so that lawbreaking does not occur apart from the law, nor wrongdoing apart from justice, nor evildoing apart from providence. And yet he says that "god punishes vice, and does many things for the punishment of the wicked" — as in the

second book On the Gods: "sometimes," he says, "unpleasant things happen to good men, not, as with the base, for the sake of punishment, but according to a different dispensation, as in cities." And again in the same passage: "first, concerning evils, one must listen in a manner similar to what has already been said; then, that these are apportioned according to the reason of Zeus, either for punishment or according to some other dispensation bearing

some relation to the whole." This too, then, is a terrible thing — that vice both comes to be and is punished according to the reason of Zeus. And he intensifies the contradiction, writing this in the second book On Nature: "vice, in relation to the terrible mishaps, has a certain proper rationale of its own: for it too comes to be, in some way, according to the reason of nature,

and, so to speak, does not come to be uselessly with respect to the whole; for otherwise the good itself would not exist." And this same man rebukes those who argue equally on both sides of a question, he who, from his utter determination to want to say something, and something distinctive and extraordinary, about everything, says not uselessly that purse-cutting and sycophancy and folly are, not uselessly, useless things — harmful, ill-starred. Then what sort of being is Zeus, I mean

Chrysippus' Zeus, punishing a thing that arises neither from himself nor uselessly? For vice, according to Chrysippus' own account, is altogether beyond reproach, whereas Zeus is open to reproach, whether he has made vice a useless thing, or, having made it not uselessly, punishes it. Again, in the first book On Justice, having spoken about the gods as opposing certain acts of injustice, he says that

"vice cannot altogether be removed, nor is it good that it should be removed." But whether it is not good that lawlessness, injustice, and folly be removed is not a question for the present discussion; the point is that he himself, so far as it lies with him, does away with vice through philosophizing — vice which, he says, it is not good to do away with — thereby doing something at odds both with reason and with god; and moreover,

in saying that god opposes certain acts of injustice, he again gives the impression that human wrongdoings are impious. Further, concerning the claim that nothing in the cosmos is blameworthy or reprehensible, since all things are produced according to the best nature, though he has often written this, there are places where again he leaves certain culpable acts of negligence, and not about small or trivial matters. At any rate, in the third book On Being, mentioning that certain things of this kind happen

to good and noble men, he says: "is it perhaps that, while some things are neglected — just as in larger households some bran and a few grains of wheat fall by the wayside though the whole is well managed — or is it because inferior daemons are placed in charge of such matters, among whom culpable negligences do in fact occur?" And he says that a great deal of necessity is also mixed in. Now, to compare such misfortunes of

good and noble men — such as the condemnation of Socrates, and the burning alive of Pythagoras by the followers of Cylon, and the killing of Zeno at the hands of the tyrant Demylus, and the torturing to death of Antiphon by Dionysius — to grains of bran falling aside, betrays how great a facility for such things he has; I let that pass. But that inferior daemons should, by providence, be set over such supervisions — how is that not a charge against god, just as it would be against a king who entrusts administrations to bad and

reckless satraps and generals, and looks on while the best men are neglected and abused by them? And indeed, if a great deal of necessity is mixed into affairs, then god neither controls all things, nor are all things administered according to his reason. He fights most of all against Epicurus and against those who do away with providence, on the basis of the conceptions we have concerning the gods,

conceiving them as beneficent and humane. And since these things are written and said in many places among the Stoics themselves, there was no need to cite passages and to add that all the gods are good. For consider what the Jews and Syrians think about the gods; consider how full of superstition the works of the poets are. But hardly anyone, so to speak, conceives of god as perishable and having come to be. Of all the others, to pass them by,

Antipater of Tarsus, in his work On the Gods, writes this verbatim: "before the whole account, we shall briefly set out the clear conception we have concerning god. We conceive of god, then, as a blessed and imperishable living being, and beneficent to human beings." Then, expounding each of these points, he says: "and indeed, all men consider them imperishable." Chrysippus, then, is not of all men,

according to Antipater; for he thinks that none of the gods is imperishable except fire, but that all of them alike have come to be and will perish. And this is said by him virtually everywhere. I shall cite a passage from the third book On the Gods: "by another account, some are said to be generated and perishable, others ungenerated; and this must be shown from the beginning

in a more physical manner. For the sun and moon and the other gods, having a similar rationale, are generated, but Zeus is eternal." And again, going on: "similar things will be said concerning their perishing and their coming to be, both regarding the other gods and Zeus; for the others perish, but of Zeus, his parts are imperishable." To these I wish further

to set alongside a few of the things said by Antipater: "those who strip away beneficence from the gods attack, in part, the preconception we have of them; by the same reasoning, so do those who think them to partake of generation and destruction." If, then, one who thinks the gods perishable is equally absurd as one who does not think them provident and beneficent, then Chrysippus has fallen equally short as Epicurus:

for the one takes away their beneficence, the other their imperishability. Moreover, in the third book On the Gods, Chrysippus says this about the other gods being nourished: "the other gods make use of nourishment, being sustained by it in a similar manner; but Zeus and the cosmos are sustained in a different way, the substances being consumed and coming to be out of fire." Here, then,

he declares that all the other gods are nourished, except the cosmos and Zeus; but in the first book On Providence he says that "Zeus grows, until he has consumed everything into himself. For since death is the separation of soul from body, and the soul of the cosmos is not separated but grows continually, until it has consumed

all matter into itself, one must not say that the cosmos dies." Who, then, could appear to contradict himself more than one who says that the same god now grows and now is not nourished? And this need not be inferred by reasoning; for he himself has clearly written, in the same work: "the cosmos alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has within itself all that it needs;

and it is nourished from itself and grows, its other parts being exchanged into one another." So not only does he, in the former passage, declare that the other gods are nourished, except the cosmos and Zeus, but in these passages he says that the cosmos too is nourished, and thus fights against himself; and even more so, in that he says the cosmos grows by being nourished from itself. The opposite would have been reasonable —

that this alone should not grow, having its own decay as its nourishment, while for the other gods, nourished from outside, there should be increase and growth, and the cosmos should rather be consumed into them, if indeed it is the case that the cosmos takes something from itself, while they always take something from it and are nourished. Secondly, then, the conception of the gods includes happiness and blessedness and self-sufficiency. Hence

they also praise Euripides for saying: "for god, if he is truly god, needs nothing; these are the wretched tales of poets." But Chrysippus himself, in the passages I have cited, says that the cosmos alone is self-sufficient, because it alone has within itself all that it needs. What then follows from the cosmos alone being self-sufficient? That neither the sun is self-sufficient, nor

the moon, nor any of the other gods; and not being self-sufficient, they could not be happy or blessed. "The infant in the womb is believed by nature to be nourished like a plant; but when it is born, being cooled by the air and hardened, its breath changes and becomes an animal; hence it is not inappropriate that the soul (psyche) is named from cooling (psyxis)." But he himself,

again, holds that the soul is a rarer and finer breath than nature's, thereby contradicting himself. For how can something fine-particled come to be out of something coarse-particled, and rarefied, by means of chilling and condensation? And what is more serious, how, declaring that the ensouled comes to be by chilling, does he hold the sun to be ensouled — the sun being fiery, and having come to be from exhalation changed into fire? For he says, in the first book

On Nature: "the transformation of fire is of this kind: through air it turns into water; and from this, as earth settles out, air is exhaled; and as the air becomes finer, the aether is poured round it in a circle, and the stars are kindled out of the sea together with the sun." What then is more opposed to kindling than chilling, or to condensation than dispersal? He makes water and earth out of fire and air, but

but the wet and earthy element he turns into fire and air. Yet even so, sometimes he makes kindling and sometimes cooling the origin of ensoulment. Moreover, when the conflagration occurs, he says the cosmos lives entirely and is a living creature, but when it is quenched again and thickens into water and earth and the corporeal, he says otherwise. He writes in the first book On Providence: "For while the cosmos is wholly fiery, it is at once both its own soul and its own governing faculty; but when it changes into the moist state and the soul that is left within it changes in a certain way into body and soul, so as to be composed of these, it acquires a different account." Here, then, he clearly says that at the conflagration even the soulless parts of the cosmos turn into the ensouled,

but at the quenching, conversely, the soul too is relaxed and moistened, changing into the corporeal. He thus appears absurd, making by cooling now living things out of insensate ones, and now turning the greater part of the soul of the cosmos into insensate and soulless things. And apart from these points, his account of the generation of the soul itself is at odds with his own doctrine, as his proof shows.

For he says the soul comes into being when the infant is born, its breath being tempered, as it were, by the cooling — like a hardening of steel; and he uses as proof "that the soul comes into being and is later in origin" the fact, above all, that children come to resemble their parents in character and disposition. But the contradiction between these claims is plain: it is not possible for the soul to be shaped in character before birth,

since it comes into being only after birth; or else it will follow that, before the soul exists, it is similar to a soul — that is, that it both is, by virtue of the similarity, and is not, because it has not yet come to be. And if someone should say that, since the resemblance arises in the mixtures of the bodies, the souls, once they have come into being, change accordingly, this destroys the very evidence for the soul's having come into being; for it is possible in this way, even for something ungenerated,

to change, once it enters in, according to the mixture producing the resemblance. As for air, he sometimes says it is naturally light and tends upward, sometimes that it is neither heavy nor light. In the second book On Motion he says: "Fire, being weightless, tends upward, and air similarly so, water being assigned rather to earth, and air to fire." But

in the Physical Treatises he inclines to the opposite view, that air "has of itself neither weight nor lightness." He says air is by nature dark, and uses this as evidence that it is also primarily cold: "for its darkness is opposed to brightness, and its coldness to the heat of fire." Having set these views in motion in the

first book On Physical Problems, again in the treatises On Habitual States he says: "habitual states are nothing other than currents of air; for it is by these that bodies are held together, and the air that holds together is the cause of each thing held together by such a state being of a certain quality — the air which they call hardness in iron, density in stone, whiteness in silver." This involves great absurdity and inconsistency:

for if the air remains such as it is by nature, how does blackness arise as whiteness in what is not white, softness as hardness in what is not hard, and looseness as density in what is not dense? But if, mixing with these things, it departs from its own nature and is assimilated to them, how is it a habitual state, or a power, or a cause of these things, by which it is itself overpowered? For this

is a case of being acted upon, not of acting or holding together, but of being weakened — such a change, in the course of which it loses its own qualities — even though everywhere they declare matter to lie inert and unmoved of itself beneath the qualities, while the qualities, being currents of air and tensions of an airy nature, in whatever parts of matter they come to be present, give each thing its form and shape. But they cannot say this

while positing that air is by nature of this sort: for being a habitual state and a tension, it will assimilate each of the bodies to itself, so that they will be black and soft; but if by its mixture with those bodies it takes on the opposite forms which it does not naturally have, then it is, in a sense, itself matter, and is not a cause of matter, nor a power over it. As for the claim, often made by him, that the void outside the cosmos is infinite, and that the infinite has neither beginning, middle,

nor end — this is often said by him. And by this above all they do away, from its own premises, with the downward motion of the atom asserted by Epicurus, since in the infinite there is no differentiation by which the one direction is conceived as up and the other as down. Yet in the fourth book On Possibilities, having posited a certain middle place and middle region, he says there that the cosmos has settled

and the passage runs thus: "Hence, as to whether one should say that the cosmos is perishable, I think this needs argument. Nevertheless, to me it appears rather to be so. But something like everlastingness is greatly assisted for it by its occupation of the middle region — namely, its being in the middle; since if it were conceived as existing elsewhere, destruction would attach to it altogether." And a little later again: "For in this way, somehow, the substance too has come to occupy the middle place eternally, being from the start of such a kind that, though it might in another way, yet because of this coincidence it does not admit destruction, and on this very account is eternal."

This passage contains one manifest and evident contradiction — leaving a certain middle place and middle region in the infinite; and a second, less obvious but even more irrational than this. For in supposing that the cosmos would not remain indestructible if its settlement had come about by chance in some other part of the void, he plainly reveals his fear that, the parts of its substance being carried toward the middle, dissolution and destruction of the cosmos would occur. Yet he would have no such fear

if he did not suppose that bodies are naturally borne everywhere toward the middle — not the middle of the substance, but of the region that surrounds the substance. About this he has often said that it is "impossible and contrary to nature; for there exists in the void no differentiation by which bodies are drawn hither rather than thither; but it is the arrangement of this cosmos that is the cause of the motion

toward its center and middle, of things inclining and being borne from every direction." It suffices for this purpose to cite a passage from the second book On Motion. Having first said that "the cosmos as a whole is a perfect body, but the parts of the cosmos are not perfect, in that they stand in a certain relation to the whole and do not exist by themselves," and having gone on to discuss its motion,

saying that "it is naturally moved, through all its parts, toward its own coherence and cohesion, not toward its dissolution and disintegration" — having said this, he adds: "Since the whole is thus stretched toward the same point and is in motion, and the parts have this motion by virtue of the nature of body, it is plausible that for all bodies the primary motion in accordance with nature is

toward the middle of the cosmos — the cosmos itself being thus moved toward itself, and its parts being moved as parts belonging to it." Then, one might say, my good man, what happened to you, that you forgot these arguments, so as to declare the cosmos dissoluble and perishable if it had not by chance occupied the middle region? For if the cosmos itself is naturally always inclined toward its own middle,

and its parts are everywhere straining toward this, wherever it may be shifted within the void, thus holding itself together and enclosing itself, it will remain indestructible and unbroken; for things that are broken and scattered suffer this through the separation of each of their parts and their dissolution toward their own proper place, as it flows away from what is contrary to nature. But you, positing the cosmos as situated in a different part of the void,

suppose that it would thereby be joined to utter destruction, and in speaking thus, and for this reason seeking a middle in the infinite, which by nature has no middle, you have abandoned those tensions and cohesions and inclinations, on the ground that they offer no security for its preservation, and have assigned the entire cause of its permanence to the occupation of place. And yet you attach the following to what you have already said, as though you were eager to refute yourself:

"the manner in which each of the parts, being connected with the rest, is moved, it is reasonable that it should also be moved in the same way by itself; and if, for the sake of argument, we should conceive of it and suppose it to be in some void outside this cosmos, then, just as it would have been moved toward the middle while being held together on every side, it will remain in this same motion, even if, for the sake of argument, a void should suddenly come to be around it."

Then again: any part whatsoever, when surrounded by void, does not lose its inclination leading toward the middle of the cosmos; yet the cosmos itself, unless chance provides for it the middle region, will lose its power of cohesion, its parts being carried off in different directions elsewhere. These points, then, contain great contradictions with the physical doctrine; but the following point already bears also on the doctrine concerning god and providence — namely, that in attributing the most trivial of causes to these things, he takes away the most authoritative and greatest cause. For what is more authoritative than the permanence of the cosmos and its substance being held together, united with its parts, toward itself? Yet this, according to Chrysippus, has come about by pure chance. For if the occupation of place is the cause of indestructibility, and this

came about by coincidence, it is clear that the preservation of the universe is the work of chance, not of fate and providence. And how does his account of possibles not conflict with his account of fate? For if, as Diodorus holds, nothing is possible except what either is or will be true, but rather everything that admits of coming to be, even if it is not going to come to be, is possible,

then many things will be possible which are not in accordance with fate — fate being, as Chrysippus maintains, invincible, irresistible, and prevailing over all things — either fate loses its power, or, if it is of such a kind as Chrysippus holds, that which admits of coming to be will often fall into the impossible. And every true statement will be necessary, being seized by the most authoritative of all necessities; and every false statement will be impossible, having the greatest cause

working against its becoming true. For the man fated to die at sea, how can he at the same time admit of dying on land? And again, is it possible for the man at Megara to go to Athens, if he is prevented by fate? Moreover, what he says about impressions vigorously conflicts with fate as well. For, wishing to show that the impression is not by itself a sufficient cause of assent,

he has said: "the wise will do harm by producing false impressions, if impressions by themselves produce assents; for the wise often use falsehood against the wicked, and present a persuasive impression, yet not one that is the cause of assent — since otherwise it will also be the cause of the false supposition and of the deception." If, then, one were to transfer this

from the case of the wise man to the case of fate, and say that assents do not come about because of fate, then, since it is because of fate that there will also be false assents and suppositions and deceptions, and men will be harmed because of fate, the very argument that exempts the wise man from doing harm at the same time proves that fate is not the cause of all things. For if men neither hold opinions nor are harmed

because of fate, it is clear that they neither act rightly nor think soundly nor form firm suppositions nor are benefited because of fate either — and the claim that fate is the cause of all things vanishes. But one who says that Chrysippus made fate not the complete cause of these things but only their preliminary cause will find him again contradicting himself elsewhere, where he praises Homer to excess for saying, about

Zeus: "hold fast to whatever ill or good he sends to each of you"; and Euripides: "O Zeus, why should I say that wretched mortals have understanding? For we depend on you, and do such things as you happen to think." He himself writes much in agreement with these lines, and says in the end that nothing, not even the least thing, moves or is checked otherwise than in accordance with the

reason of Zeus, which he says is the same as fate. Furthermore, the preliminary cause is weaker than the complete cause, and does not prevail, being overpowered by other causes rising up against it; but he declares fate to be an invincible, unhindered, and unalterable cause, and himself calls it Atropos, and Adrasteia, and Necessity, and Fate, as setting a "limit" upon all things. Should we, then, say that assents are not

in our power, nor virtues, nor vices, nor right action, nor error, or should we say that fate is deficient and that destiny is unfulfilled and the motions and dispositions of Zeus are ineffectual? For from these follow, on the one hand, its being a complete cause, and on the other, its being only a preliminary cause of fate. For being a complete cause of all things

does away with what is in our power and what is voluntary, while being a preliminary cause destroys its being unhindered and effective. For not once or twice, but everywhere — indeed in all his physical writings — he has written: "for the particular natures and motions many obstacles and hindrances arise, but for the nature of the whole, none." And how, when the particular motions

are hindered and obstructed, can the motion of the whole that extends into them be itself unimpeded and unhindered? For neither is the nature of man unimpeded, if that of the foot or the hand is not; nor would the motion of a ship be unhindered, if the activities concerning the sail or the rowing meet with certain hindrances. And apart from these points, if impressions do not come about in accordance with fate,

then fate is not the cause of assents; but if, because it produces impressions leading to assent, assents are said to come about in accordance with fate, how does it not often conflict with itself, producing, in matters of the greatest moment, differing impressions and dragging the mind toward opposite sides — as when they say that those who assent to the one impression and do not withhold judgment err: if they yield to unclear impressions, falling short; if to false ones, being wholly deceived; and if

...or opine, when assenting to things that are simply non-apprehensible? And yet, since there are three possibilities, one of them must hold: either not every impression is the work of fate, or every acceptance of an impression and every assent is free of error, or fate itself is not beyond reproach. For I do not see how it can be blameless in producing impressions of such a kind that not to fight against them, not to resist, but to follow and yield to them, is itself blameworthy.

Indeed, in his debates against the Academics, what was the greater part of the argument, for Chrysippus himself and for Antipater, concerned with? It concerned the claim that one should neither act nor have impulse without assent, and that those who maintain that, once the appropriate impression occurs, one should have impulse at once without yielding or assenting, are uttering fictions and empty suppositions. And again Chrysippus says that god instills false impressions, and so does the wise man, not because they need us to assent or yield, but only to act and to have impulse toward what appears; whereas we, being inferior, assent to such impressions because of our weakness.

Now the confusion and inconsistency of these statements, set against one another, is not at all hard to see. For he who does not need people to assent but only to act -- he who instills the impressions in them, whether god or the sage -- knows that for the purpose of acting the impressions suffice and that assents are superfluous. So that if, knowing that an impression does not by itself produce an impulse to act apart from assent, he nevertheless creates false and persuasive impressions, he is himself willingly responsible for people falling into error and going wrong by assenting to things non-apprehensible.

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