De Stoicorum repugnantiis

Some of the ancients have said, that the same befell Zeno which befalls him who has sour wine which he can sell neither for vinegar nor wine; for his things preferred, as he called them, cannot be disposed of, either as good or as indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter yet far more intricate; for he sometimes says, that they are mad who make no account of riches, health, freedom from pain, and integrity of the body, nor take any care to attain them; and having cited that sentence of Hesiod,

Work hard, O God-born Perses,[*](Works and Days, 299.)

he cries out, that it would be a madness to advise the contrary and say,

Work not, O God-born Perses.

And in his book of Lives he affirms, that a wise man will for the sake of gain live with kings, and teach for

money, receiving from some of his scholars his reward beforehand, and making contract with others of them; and in his Seventh Book of Duties he says, that he will not scruple to turn his heels thrice over his head, if for so doing he may have a talent. In his First Book of Good Things, he yields and grants to those that desire it to call these preferred things good and their contraries evil, in these very words: Any one who will, according to these permutations, may call one thing good and another evil, having a regard to the things themselves, and not wandering elsewhere, not failing in the understanding of the things signified, and in the rest accommodating himself to custom in the denomination. Having thus in this place set his preferred things so near to good, and mixed them therewith, he again says, that none of these things belongs at all to us, but that reason withdraws and averts us from all such things; for he has written thus in his First Book of Exhortations. And in his Third Book of Nature he says, that some esteem those happy who reign and are rich, which is all one as if those should be reputed happy who make water in golden chamber-pots and wear golden fringes; but to a good man the losing of his whole estate is but as the losing of one groat, and the being sick no more than if he had stumbled. Wherefore he has not filled virtue only, but Providence also, with these contradictions. For virtue would seem to the utmost degree sordid and foolish, if it should busy itself about such matters, and enjoin a wise man for their sake to sail to Bosphorus or tumble with his heels over his head. And Jupiter would be very ridiculous to be styled Ctesius, Epicarpius, and Charitodotes, because forsooth he gives the wicked golden chamber-pots and golden fringes, and the good such things as are hardly worth a groat, when through Jupiter’s providence they become rich. And yet much more ridiculous is Apollo, if he sits to give oracles concerning golden fringes and chamber-pots and the recovering of a stumble.

But they make this repugnancy yet more evident by their demonstration. For they say, that what may be used both well and ill, the same is neither good nor bad; but fools make an ill use of riches, health, and strength of body; therefore none of these is good. If therefore God gives not virtue to men,—but honesty is eligible of itself, —and yet bestows on them riches and health without virtue, he confers them on those who will use them not well but ill, that is hurtfully, shamefully, and perniciously. Now, if the Gods can bestow virtue and do not, they are not good; but if they cannot make men good, neither can they help them, for except virtue nothing is good and helpful. Now to judge those who are otherwise made good according to virtue and strength --- is nothing to the purpose, for good men also judge the Gods according to virtue and strength; so that they do no more aid men than they are aided by them.

Now Chrysippus neither professes himself nor any one of his disciples and teachers to be virtuous. What then do they think of others, but those things which they say, —that they are all mad, fools, impious, transgressors of the laws, and in the utmost degree of misery and unhappiness? And yet they say that our affairs, though we act thus miserably, are governed by the providence of the Gods. Now if the Gods, changing their minds, should desire to hurt, afflict, overthrow, and quite crush us, they could not put us in a worse condition than we already are; as Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit no greater degree either of misery or of unhappiness; so that if it had a voice, it would pronounce these words of Hercules:

I am so full of miseries, there is

No place to stow them in.

[*](Eurip. Herc. Fur. 1245.)

Now who can imagine any assertions more repugnant to one another than that of Chrysippus concerning the Gods and that concerning men; when he says, that the Gods do in the best manner possible provide for men, and yet men are in the worst condition imaginable?