Letters From a Stoic (15 page)

Our Stoic philosophers, as you know, maintain that there are two elements in the universe from which all things are derived, namely cause and matter.
Matter lies inert and inactive, a substance with unlimited potential, but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion; and it is cause (this meaning the same as reason) which turns matter to whatever end it wishes and fashions it into a variety of different products.
There must, then, be something out of which things come into being and something else by means of which things come into being; the first is matter and the second is cause.
Now all art is an imitation of nature.
So apply what I was saying about the universe to man’s handiwork.
Take a statue: it had the matter to be worked on by the sculptor and it had the sculptor to give configuration to the matter – bronze, in other words, in the case of the statue, being the matter and the craftsman the cause.
It is the same with all things: they
consist of something which comes into being and something else which brings them into being.

Stoics believe that there is only one cause – that which brings things into being.
Aristotle thinks that the term ‘cause’ can be used in three different ways.
‘The first cause,’ he says, ‘is matter – without it nothing can be brought into existence.
The second is the craftsman, and the third is form, which is impressed on every single piece of work as on a statue.’ This last is what Aristotle calls the
idos
.
‘And,’ he says, ‘there is a fourth as well, the purpose of the whole work.’ Let me explain what this means.
The ‘first cause’ of the statue is the bronze, as it would never have been made unless there had been something out of which it could be cast or moulded.
The ‘second cause’ is the sculptor, as the bronze could not have been shaped into the state in which it is without those skilled hands having come to it.
The ‘third cause’ is the form, as our statue could not have been called ‘The Man with the Spear’ or ‘The Boy tying up his Hair’
*
had this not been the guise impressed on it.
The ‘fourth cause’ is the end in view in its making, for had this not existed the statue would never have been made at all.
What is this end?
It is what attracted the sculptor, what his goal was in creating it: it may have been money, if when he worked it he was going to sell it, or fame, if the aim of his endeavours was to win a name, or religion, if it was a work for presentation to a temple.
This too, then, is a cause of the statue’s coming into being – unless you take the view that things in the absence of which the statue would never have been created should not be included among the causes of the particular creation.

To these four causes Plato adds a fifth in the model – what he himself calls the
idea
– this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work.

Now it is for you as judge to pronounce your verdict and declare whose statement in your opinion seems to be – not the truest (for that here is as far out of our reach as Truth herself) – but most like the truth.

This assortment of causes which Aristotle and Plato have collected together embraces either too much or too little.
For
if they take the view that everything in the absence of which a thing cannot be brought into being is a cause of its creation, they have failed to name enough.
They should be including time in their list of causes – nothing can come into being without time.
They should be including place – a thing will certainly not come into being if there is nowhere for this to happen.
They should be including motion – without this nothing either comes into existence or goes out of existence; without motion there is no such thing as art and no such thing as change.
What we are looking for at the moment is a primary and general cause.
And this must be something elementary, since matter too is elementary.
If we ask what cause is, surely the answer is creative reason, that is to say God.
All those things which you have listed are not an array of individual causes, but dependent on a single one, the cause that actually creates.
You may say form is a cause, but form is something which the artist imposes on his work – a part of the cause, yes, but not a cause.
The model, too, is an indispensable instrument of the cause, but not a cause.
To the sculptor his model is as indispensable as his chisel or his file: his art can get nowhere without them, but this does not make them parts or causes of the art.
‘The end the artist has in view,’ our friend says, ‘the thing which induces him to set about a work of creation, is a cause.’ Even if we grant that it is, it is only an accessory cause, not the effective cause.
Accessory causes are infinite in number; what we are after is the general cause.
In any event that assertion on the part of Plato and Aristotle that the universe in its entirety, the whole, completed work of creation, is a cause is not in keeping with their usual acuteness as thinkers.
There is a very great difference between a creation and its cause.

Now you must either pronounce your verdict or – the easier course in matters of this nature – declare your inability to arrive at one and order a rehearing.
‘What pleasure,’ you
may say, ‘do you get out of frittering time away discussing those questions?
It’s not as if you could say they rid you of any emotion or drive out any desire.’ Well, in raising and arguing these less deserving topics my own attitude is that they serve to calm the spirit, and that whilst I examine myself first, certainly, I examine the universe around me afterwards.
I am not even wasting time, as you suppose, at the moment.
For those questions, provided they are not subjected to a mincing or dissection with the useless kind of over-subtlety we have just seen as the result, all elevate and lighten the spirit, the soul which yearns to win free of the heavy load it is saddled with here and return to the world where it once belonged.
For to it this body of ours is a burden and a torment.
And harassed by the body’s overwhelming weight, the soul is in captivity unless philosophy comes to its rescue, bidding it breathe more freely in the contemplation of nature, releasing it from earthly into heavenly surroundings.
This to the soul means freedom, the ability to wander far and free; it steals away for a while from the prison in which it is confined and has its strength renewed in the world above.
When craftsmen engaged on some intricate piece of work which imposes a tiring strain on the eyes have to work by an inadequate and undependable light, they go out into the open air and treat their eyes to the free sunshine in some open space or other dedicated to public recreation.
In the same way the soul, shut away in this dim and dismal dwelling, as often as it can makes for the open and finds its relaxation in contemplating the natural universe.
The wise man and devotee of philosophy is needless to say inseparable from his body, and yet he is detached from it so far as the best part of his personality is concerned, directing his thoughts towards things far above.
He looks on this present life of his, much like the man who has signed on as a soldier, as the term he has to serve out.
And he is so made that he neither loves life nor hates it.
He endures the lot of mortality even though he knows there is a finer one in store for him.

Are you telling me not to investigate the natural world?
Are you trying to bar me from the whole of it and restrict me to a part of it?
Am I not to inquire how everything in the universe began, who gave things form, who separated them out when they were all plunged together in a single great conglomeration of inert matter?
Am I not to inquire into the identity of the artist who created that universe?
Or the process by which this huge mass became subject to law and order?
Or the nature of the one who collected the things that were scattered apart, sorted apart the things that were commingled, and when all things lay in formless chaos allotted them their individual shapes?
Or the source of the light (is it fire or is it something brighter?) that is shed on us in such abundance?
Am I supposed not to inquire into this sort of thing?
Am I not to know where I am descended from, whether I am to see this world only once or be born into it again time after time, what my destination is to be after my stay here, what abode will await my soul on its release from the terms of its serfdom on earth?
Are you forbidding me to associate with heaven, in other words ordering me to go through life with my eyes bent on the ground?
I am too great, was born to too great a destiny to be my body’s slave.
So far as I am concerned that body is nothing more or less than a fetter on my freedom.
I place it squarely in the path of fortune, letting her expend her onslaught on it, not allowing any blow to get through it to my actual self.
For that body is all that is vulnerable about me: within this dwelling so liable to injury there lives a spirit that is free.
Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never shall it drive me to any pretence unworthy of a good man; never shall I tell a lie out of consideration for this petty body.
I shall dissolve our partnership when this seems the proper course, and even now while we
are bound one to the other the partnership will not be on equal terms: the soul will assume undivided authority.
Refusal to be influenced by one’s body assures one’s freedom.

And to this freedom (to get back to the subject) even the kind of inquiries we were talking about just now have a considerable contribution to make.
We know that everything in the universe is composed of matter and of God.
God, encompassed within them, controls them all, they following his leadership and guidance.
Greater power and greater value reside in that which creates (in this case God) than in the matter on which God works.
Well, the place which in this universe is occupied by God is in man the place of the spirit.
What matter is in the universe the body is in us.
Let the worse, then, serve the better.
Let us meet with bravery whatever may befall us.
Let us never feel a shudder at the thought of being wounded or of being made a prisoner, or of poverty or persecution.
What is death?
Either a transition or an end.
I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.