De Stoicorum repugnantiis

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. IV. Goodwin, William W., translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge, MA: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

And this opinion is consequent to their principal ones. It is moreover manifest that Chrysippus, though he has also written many things to the contrary, lays this for a position, that there is not any vice greater or any sin more grievous than another, nor any virtue more excellent or any good deed better than another; so that he says in

his Third Book of Nature: As it well beseems Jupiter to glory in himself and his life, to magnify himself, and (if we may so say) to bear up his head, have an high conceit of himself, and speak big, for that he leads a life worthy of lofty speech; so the same things do not misbeseem all good men, since they are in nothing exceeded by Jupiter. And yet himself, in his Third Book of Justice, says, that they who make pleasure the end destroy justice, but they who say it is only a good do not destroy it. These are his very words: For perhaps, if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure. But if that only is good which is honest, he who affirms pleasure to be a good is in an error, but he errs less than he who makes it also the end; for the one destroys justice, the other preserves it; and by the one human society is overthrown, but the other leaves a place to goodness and humanity. Now I let pass his saying farther in his book concerning Jupiter, that the virtues increase and go on, lest I may seem to catch at words; though Chrysippus is indeed in this kind very sharp upon Plato and others. But when he forbids the praising of every thing that is done according to virtue, he shows that there is some difference between good deeds. Now he says thus in his book concerning Jupiter: For since each virtue has its own proper works, there are some of these that are more to be praised than others; for he would show himself to be very frigid, that should undertake to praise and extol any man for holding out the finger stoutly, for abstaining chastely from an old woman ready to drop into the grave, and patiently hearing it said that three are not exactly four. What he says in his Third Book of the Gods is not unlike to this: For I moreover think that the praises of such things as to abstain from an
old woman who has one foot in the grave, and to endure the bite of a fly, though proceeding from virtue, would be very impertinent. What other reprehender of his doctrines does this man then expect? For if he who praises such things is frigid, he who asserts every one of them to be a great—nay, a very great good deed—is much more frigid. For if to bear the bite of a fly is equal to the being valiant, and to abstain from an old trot now at the pit’s brink is equal to the being temperate, there is, I think, no difference whether a virtuous man is prized for these or for those. Moreover, in his Second Book of Friendship, teaching that friendships are not for every fault to be dissolved, he has these very expressions: For it is meet that some faults should be wholly passed by, others lightly reprehended, others more severely, and others deemed worthy a total dissolution of friendship. And which is more, he says in the same book, that we will converse with some more and some less, so that some shall be more and some less friends; and this diversity extending very far, some are worthy of such an amity, others of a greater; and these will deserve to be so far trusted, those not so far, and the like. For what else has he done in these places, but shown the great diversity there is between these things? Moreover, in his book concerning Honesty, to demonstrate that only to be good which is honest, he uses these words: What is good is eligible; what is eligible is acceptable; what is acceptable is laudable; and what is laudable is honest. And again: What is good is joyous; what is joyous is venerable; what is venerable is honest. But these speeches are repugnant to himself; for either all good is commendable, and then the abstaining chastely from an old woman is also commendable; or all good is neither venerable nor joyous, and his reason falls to the ground. For how can it possibly be frigid in others to praise any for such
things, and not ridiculous for him to rejoice and glory in them?

Such indeed he frequently is; but in his disputations against others he takes not the least care of speaking things contrary and dissonant to himself. For in his books of Exhorting, reprehending Plato, who said, that to him who has neither learned nor knows how to live it is profitable not to live, he speaks in this manner: For this speech is both repugnant to itself, and not at all persuasive. For first insinuating that it is best for us not to live, and in a sort counselling us to die, he will excite us rather to any thing else than to be philosophers; for neither can he who does not live philosophize, nor he who shall live long wickedly and ignorantly become wise. And going on, he says that it is convenient for the wicked also to continue in life. And afterwards thus, word for word: First, as virtue, barely taken, has nothing towards our living, so neither has vice any thing to oblige us to depart. Nor is it necessary to turn over other books, that we may show Chrysippus’s contradictoriness to himself; but in these same, he sometimes with commendation brings forth this saying of Antisthenes, that either understanding or a halter is to be provided, as also that of Tyrtaeus,

Come nigh the bounds of virtue or of death.

Now what else will this show, but that to wicked men and fools not to live is more profitable than to live? And sometimes correcting Theognis, he says, that the poet should not have written,

From poverty to fly;—

but rather thus,

  • From wickedness to fly, into the deep
  • Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.
    • [*](See Theognis, vs. 175.)

    What therefore else does he seem to do, but to set down

    himself those things and doctrines which, when others write them, he expunges; condemning, indeed, Plato for showing that not to live is better than to live viciously and ignorantly; and yet counselling Theognis to let a man break his neck or throw himself into the sea, that he may avoid vice? For having praised Antisthenes for directing fools to an halter, he again blames him, saying that vice has nothing that should oblige us to depart out of life.

    Moreover, in his books against the same Plato, concerning Justice, he immediately at the very beginning leaps into a discourse touching the Gods, and says, that Cephalus did not rightly avert men from injustice by the fear of the Gods, and that his doctrine is easily misrepresented, and that it affords to the contrary many arguments and probabilities impugning the discourse concerning divine punishments, as nothing differing from the tales of Acco and Alphito (or Raw-Head and Bloody-Bones), with which women are wont to frighten little children from their unlucky pranks. Having thus traduced Plato, he in other places again praises him, and often alleges this saying of Euripides:

  • Howe’er you may deride it, there’s a Jove,
  • With other Gods, who sees men’s woes above.
    • And likewise, in his First Book of Justice citing these verses of Hesiod,
  • Then Jove from heaven punishments did send,
  • And plague and famine brought them to their end,
    • [*](Works and Days, 242.)
    he says, the Gods do these things, that the wicked being punished, others admonished by these examples may less dare to attempt the doing of such things.

    Again, in his book of Justice, subjoining, that it is possible for those who make pleasure a good but not the end to preserve also justice, he said in express terms: For perhaps if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but

    not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure. So much he says in this place concerning pleasure. But in his book against Plato, accusing him for seeming to make health a good, he says, that not only justice, but also magnanimity, temperance, and all the other virtues will be taken away, if we make pleasure, health, or any thing else which is not honest, to be a good. What therefore is to be said for Plato, we have elsewhere written against him. But here his contradicting himself is manifest, when he says in one place, that if a man supposes that with honesty pleasure also is a good, justice is preserved, and in another, accuses those who make any thing besides honesty to be a good of taking away all the virtues. But that he may not leave any means of making an apology for his contradictions, writing against Aristotle concerning justice, he affirms him not to have spoken rightly when he said, that pleasure being made the end, justice is taken away, and together with justice, every one also of the other virtues. For justice (he says) will indeed be taken away; but there is nothing to hinder the other virtues from remaining and being, though not eligible for themselves, yet good and virtues. Then he reckons up every one of them by name. But it will be better to set down his own words. For pleasure, says he, appearing according to this discourse to be made the end, yet all this seems not to me to be contained in it. Wherefore we must say, that neither any of the virtues is eligible nor any of the vices to be avoided for itself, but that all these things are to be referred to the proposed scope. Yet nothing, according to their opinion, will hinder but that fortitude, prudence, continence, and patience may be good, and their contraries to be avoided. Has there ever then been any man more peevish in his disputes than he, who has blamed two of
    the principal philosophers, the one for taking away all virtue, by not making that only to be good which is honest, and the other for not thinking all the virtues except justice to be preserved, though pleasure is made the end? For it is a wonderful licentiousness that, discoursing of the same matters, he should when accusing Plato take away again those very things which himself sets down when reprehending Aristotle. Moreover, in his demonstrations concerning justice, he says expressly, that every good deed is both a lawful action and a just operation; but that every thing which is done according to continence, patience, prudence, or fortitude is a good deed, and therefore also a just operation. Why then does he not also leave justice to them to whom he leaves prudence, fortitude, and continence; since whatever they do well according to the said virtue, they do also justly?

    Moreover, Plato having said, that injustice, as being the corruption and sedition of the soul, loses not its power even in those who have it within them, but sets the wicked man against himself, and molests and disturbs him; Chrysippus, blaming this, affirms that it is absurdly said, A man injures himself; for that injustice is to another, and not to one’s self. But forgetting this, he again says, in his demonstrations concerning justice, that the unjust man is injured by himself and injures himself when he injures another, becoming to himself the cause of transgressing, and undeservedly hurting himself. In his books indeed against Plato, contending that we cannot speak of injustice against one’s self, but against another, he has these words: For men cannot be unjust by themselves; injustice requires several on opposite sides, speaking contrary one unto another. But no such thing extends to one alone, except inasmuch as he is affected towards his neighbor. But in his demonstrations he has such discourses as these, concerning the unjust man’s being injurious also to

    himself: The law forbids the being any way the author of transgression, and to act unjustly will be transgression. He therefore who is to himself the author of acting unjustly transgresses against himself. Now he that transgresses against any one also injures him; therefore he who is injurious to any one whomsoever is injurious also to himself. Again: Sin is a hurt, and every one who sins sins against himself; every one therefore who sins hurts himself undeservedly, and if so, is also unjust to himself. And farther thus: He who is hurt by another hurts himself, and that undeservedly. Now that is to be unjust. Every one therefore that is injured, by whomsoever it is, is unjust also to himself.

    He says, that the doctrine concerning good and evil which himself introduces and approves is most agreeable to life, and does most of all reach the inbred prenotions; for this he has affirmed in his Third Book of Exhortations. But in his First Book he says, that this doctrine takes a man off from all other things, as being nothing to us, nor co-operating any thing towards felicity. See now, how consonant he is to himself, when he asserts a doctrine which takes us off from life, health, indolence, and integrity of the senses, and says that those things we beg of the Gods are nothing to us, though most agreeable to life and to the common presumptions. But that there may be no denial of his speaking contradictions, in his Third Book of Justice he has said thus: Wherefore also, from the excellence of their greatness and beauty, we seem to speak things like to fictions, and not according to man or human nature. Is it then possible that any one can more plainly confess his speaking things contrary to himself than this man does, who affirms those things which (he says) for their excellency seem to be fictions and to be spoken above man and human nature, to be agreeable to life, and most of all to reach the inbred prenotions?

    In every one of his natural and ethical books, he asserts vice to be the very essence of unhappiness; writing and contending that to live viciously is the same thing as to live unhappily. But in his Third Book of Nature, having said that it is profitable for a fool to live rather than to die, though he is never to become wise, he subjoins: For such is the nature of good things among men, that evil things are in some sort preferred before indifferent ones. I let pass therefore, that having elsewhere said that nothing is profitable to fools, he here says that to live foolishly is profitable to them. Now those things being by them called indifferent which are neither bad nor good, when he says that bad things precede them, he says nothing else but that evil things precede those that are not evil, and that to be unhappy is more profitable than not to be unhappy; and if so, he esteems not to be unhappy to be more unprofitable—and if more unprofitable, more hurtful—than to be unhappy. Desiring therefore to mitigate this absurdity, he adds concerning evils: But it is not these evils that are preferred, but reason; with which it is more convenient to live, though we shall be fools. First therefore he says that vice and things participating of vice are evil, and that nothing else is so. Now vice is something reasonable, or rather depraved reason. For those therefore who are fools to live with reason, is nothing else but to live with vice. Thence to live being fools is to live being unhappy. In what then is this preferred to indifferent things? For he surely will not say that with regard to happiness unhappiness is to be preferred. But neither, say they, does Chrysippus altogether think that the remaining in life is to be reckoned amongst good things, or the going out of it amongst bad; but both of them amongst indifferent ones, according to Nature. Wherefore also it sometimes becomes meet for the happy to make themselves away,

    and again for the unhappy to continue in life. Now what greater repugnance can there be than this in the choice and avoiding of things, if it is convenient for those who are in the highest degree happy to forsake those good things that are present, for the want of some one indifferent thing? And yet they esteem none of the indifferent things either desirable or to be avoided; but only good desirable, and only evil to be avoided. So that it comes to pass, according to them, that the reasoning about actions regards neither things desirable nor things refusable; but that aiming at other things, which they neither shun nor choose, they make life and death dependent on these.

    Chrysippus confesses that good things are totally different from bad; and it must of necessity be so, if these make them with whom they are present miserable to the very utmost point, and those render their possessors in the highest degree happy. Now he says, that good and evil things are sensible, writing thus in his First Book of the End: That good and evil things are perceptible by sense, we are by these reasons forced to say; for not only the passions, with their species, as sorrow, fear, and such others, are sensible; but we may also have a sense of theft, adultery, and the like, and generally, of folly, cowardice, and other vices not a few; and again, not only of joy, beneficence, and many other dependences on good deeds, but also of prudence, fortitude, and the other virtues. Let us pass by the other absurdities of these things; but that they are repugnant to those things which are delivered by him concerning the wise man that knows nothing of his being so, who does not confess? For good, when present, being sensible and having a great difference from evil, is it not most absurd, that he who is of bad become good should be ignorant of it, and not perceive virtue when present, but think that vice is still within him? For either none who has all virtues can be ignorant and

    doubt of his having them; or the difference of virtue from vice, of happiness from misery, and of a most honest life from a most shameful one, is little and altogether difficult to be discerned, if he who has exchanged the one for the other does not perceive it.