Noctes Atticae

How Chrysippus replied to those who denied the existence of Providence.

Those who do not believe that the world was created for God and mankind, or that human affairs are ruled by Providence, think that they are using a strong argument when they say:

If there were a Providence, there would be no evils.

For they declare that nothing is less consistent with Providence than the existence of such a quantity of troubles and evils in a world which He is said to have made for the sake of man. Chrysippus, arguing against such views in the fourth book of his treatise On Providence [*](Fr. ii. 1169, Aru.) says:

There is absolutely nothing more foolish than those men who think that good could exist, if there were at the same time no evil. For since good is the opposite of evil, it necessarily follows that both must exist in opposition to each other, supported as it were by mutual adverse forces; since as a matter of fact no opposite is conceivable without something to oppose it. For how could there be an idea of justice if there were no acts of injustice? or what else is justice than the absence of injustice? How too can courage be understood except by contrast with cowardice? Or temperance except by contrast with intemperance? How also could there be wisdom, if folly did not exist as its opposite? Therefore,

said he,

why do not the

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fools also wish that there may be truth, but no falsehood? For it is in the same way that good and evil exist, happiness and unhappiness, pain and pleasure. For, as Plato says, [*](Phaedo, 3, p. 60 B.) they are bound one to the other by their opposing extremes; if you take away one, you will have removed both.

In the same book [*](Fr. ii, 1170, Arn.) Chrysippus also considers and discusses this question, which he thinks worth investigating: whether men's diseases come by nature; that is, whether nature herself, or Providence, if you will, which created this structure of the universe and the human race, also created the diseases, weakness, and bodily infirmities from which mankind suffers. He, however, does not think that it was nature's original intention to make men subject to disease; for that would never have been consistent with nature as the source and mother of all things good.

But,

said he,

when she was creating and bringing forth many great things which were highly suitable and useful, there were also produced at the same time troubles closely connected with those good things that she was creating

; and he declared that these were not due to nature, but to certain inevitable consequences, a process that he himself calls kata\ parakolou/qhsin.

Exactly as,

he says,

when nature fashioned men's bodies, a higher reason and the actual usefulness of what she was creating demanded that the lead be made of very delicate and small bones. But this greater usefulness of one part was attended with an external disadvantage; namely, that the head was but slightly protected and could be damaged by slight blows and shocks. In the same way diseases too and illness were created at the same time with

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health. Exactly, by Heaven!

said he,

as vices, through their relationship to the opposite quality, are produced at the same time that virtue is created for mankind by nature's design.

How Chrysippus also maintained the power and inevitable nature of fate, but at the same time declared that we had control over our plans and decisions.

CHRYSIPPUS, the leader of the Stoic philosophy, defined fate, which the Greeks call ei(marme/nh, in about the following terms: [*](Fr. ii. 1000, Arn.)

Fate,

he says,

is an eternal and unalterable series of circumstances, and a chain rolling and entangling itself through an unbroken series of consequences, from which it is fashioned and made up.

But I have copied Chrysippus' very words, as exactly as I could recall them, in order that, if my interpretation should seem too obscure to anyone, he may turn his attention to the philosopher's own language. For in the fourth book of his work On Providence, he says that ei(marme/nh is

an orderly series, established by nature, of all events, following one another and joined together from eternity, and their unalterable interdependence.

But the authors of other views and of other schools of philosophy openly criticize this definition as follows:

If Chrysippus,

they say,

believes that all things are set in motion and directed by fate, and that the course of fate and its coils cannot be turned aside or evaded, then the sins and faults of men too ought not to cause anger or be attributed to

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themselves and their inclinations, but to a certain unavoidable impulse which arises from fate,

which is the mistress and arbiter of all things, and through which everything that will happen must happen; and that therefore the establishing of penalties for the guilty by law is unjust, if men do not voluntarily commit crimes, but are led into them by fate.

Against these criticisms Chrysippus argues at length, subtilely and cleverly, but the purport of all that he has written on that subject is about this: [*](Fr. ii. 1000, Arn.)

Although it is a fact,

he says,

that all things are subject to an inevitable and fundamental law and are closely linked to fate, yet the peculiar properties of our minds are subject to fate only according to their individuality and quality. For if in the beginning they are fashioned by nature for health and usefulness, they will avoid with little opposition and little difficulty all that force with which fate threatens them from without. But if they are rough, ignorant, crude, and without any support from education, through their own perversity and voluntary impulse they plunge into continual faults and sin, even though the assault of some inconvenience due to fate be slight or non-existent. And that this very thing should happen in this way is due to that natural and inevitable connection of events which is called 'fate.' For it is in the nature of things, so to speak, fated and inevitable that evil characters should not be free from sins and faults.

A little later he uses an illustration of this statement of his, which is in truth quite neat and appropriate: [*](Fr. ii. 1000, Arn.)

For instance,

he says,

if you roll a cylindrical stone over a sloping, steep piece of ground, you do indeed furnish the beginning and

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cause of its rapid descent, yet soon it speeds onward, not because you make it do so, but because of its peculiar form and natural tendency to roll; just so the order, the law, and the inevitable quality of fate set in motion the various classes of things and the beginnings of causes, but the carrying out of our designs and thoughts, and even our actions, are regulated by each individual's own will and the characteristics of his mind.

Then he adds these words, in harmony with what I have said: [*](Fr. ii. 1000, Arn.)

Therefore it is said by the Pythagoreans also: [*](Xru/sea )/Eph, 54.)

1. You'll learn that men have ills which they themselves
2. Bring on themselves,

for harm comes to each of them through themselves, and they go astray through their own impulse and are harmed by their own purpose and determination.

Therefore he says that wicked, slothful, sinful and reckless men ought not to be endured or listened to, who, when they are caught fast in guilt and sin, take refuge in the inevitable nature of fate, as if in the asylum of some shrine, declaring that their outrageous actions must be charged, not to their own heedlessness, but to fate.

The first to express this thought was the oldest and wisest of the poets, in these verses: [*](Homer, Odyss. i. 32.)

1. Alas! how wrongly mortals blame the gods!
2. From us, they say, comes evil; they themselves
3. By their own folly woes unfated bear.

Therefore Marcus Cicero, in the book which he wrote On Fate [*](Fr. 1, p. 582, Orelli2.) after first remarking that this question is highly obscure and involved, declares that even the philosopher Chrysippus [*](Fr. ii, 977, Arn. 2 ) was unable to extricate himself from its difficulties, using these words:

Chrysippus, in spite of all efforts and labour, is perplexed how to explain that everything is ruled by fate, but that we nevertheless have some control over our conduct.