Part 3 (1/2)
While all compound bodies were resolvable into the four elements, there were important differences among the elements, themselves. Two of them, fire and air, were light; the other two, water and earth, were heavy. By 'light' was meant that which tends away from its own centre, by 'heavy,' that which, tends towards it. The two light elements stood to the two heavy ones in much the same relation as the active to the pa.s.sive principle generally. But further, fire had such a primary as ent.i.tles it, if the definition of element were pressed, to be considered alone worthy of the name. For the three other elements arose out of it and were to be again resolved into it.
We should obtain a wholly wrong impression of what Bishop Berkeley calls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in this connection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Let us rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign and beatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial life. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the one destructive, the other what we may call 'constructive,' and which he called 'artistic'. This latter kind of fire, which was known as aether, was the substance of the heavenly bodies, as it was also of the soul of animals and of the 'nature' of plants. Chrysippus, following Herac.l.i.tus, taught that the elements pa.s.sed into one another by a process of condensation and rarefaction. Fire first became solidified into air, then air into water and lastly water into earth. The process of dissolution took place in the reverse order, earth being rarefied into water, water into air, and air into fire.
It is allowable to see in this old world doctrine an antic.i.p.ation of the modern idea of different states of matter--the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous, with a fourth beyond the gaseous which science can still only guess at, and in which matter seems almost to merge into spirit.
Each of the four elements had its own abode in the universe.
Outermost of all was the ethereal 'fire' which was divided into two spheres: first that of the fixed stars and next that of the planets.
Below this lay the sphere of 'air', below this again that of 'water', and lowest or in other words, most central of all was the sphere of 'earth', the solid foundation of the whole structure. Water might be said to be above earth because nowhere was there water to be found without earth beneath it, but the surface of water was always equidistant from the centre, whereas earth had prominences which rose above water.
When we say that the Stoics regarded the universe as a plenum, the reader must understand by 'the universe' the Cosmos or ordered whole.
Within this there was no emptiness owing to the pressure of the celestial upon the terrestrial sphere. But outside of this lay the infinite void without beginning, middle, or end. This occupied a very ambiguous position In their scheme. It was not being, for being was confined to body and yet it was there. It was in fact nothing, and that was why it was infinite. For as nothing cannot be bound to any thing, so neither can there be any bound to nothing. But while bodiless itself, it had the capacity to contain body, a fact which enabled it, despite its non-ent.i.ty, to serve, as we shall see, a useful purpose.
Did the Stoics then regard the universe as finite or as infinite? In answering this question we must distinguish our terms, as they did.
The All, they said, was infinite, but the Whole was finite. For the 'All' was the cosmos and the void, whereas the 'Whole' was the cosmos only. This distinction we may suppose to have originated with the later members of the school. For Appolodorus noted the ambiguity of the word 'All' as meaning, (1) the cosmos only, (2) cosmos + void
If then by the term ”universe” we understand the cosmos, or ordered whole, we must say that the Stoics regarded the universe as finite.
All being and all body, which was the same thing with being, had necessarily bounds, it was only not being, which was boundless.
Another distinction, due this time to Chrysippus himself, which the Stoics found it convenient to draw, was between the three words 'void,' 'place' and 's.p.a.ce'. Void was defined as 'the absence of body', place was that which was occupied by body, the term 's.p.a.ce'
was reserved for that which was partly occupied and partly unoccupied. As there was no corner of the cosmos unfilled by body, s.p.a.ce, it will be seen, was another name for the All. Place was compared to a vessel that was full, void to one that was empty, and s.p.a.ce to the vast wine-cask, such as that in which Diogenes made his home, which was kept partly fully, but in which there was always room for more. The last comparison must of course not be pressed. For if s.p.a.ce be a cask, it is one without top, bottom or sides.
But while the Stoics regarded our universe as an island of being in an ocean of void, they did not admit the possibility that other such islands might exist beyond our ken. The spectacle of the starry heavens, which presented itself nightly to their gaze in all the brilliancy of a southern sky--that was all there was of being, beyond that lay nothingness. Democritus or the Epicureans might dream of other worlds, but the Stoics contended for the unity of the cosmos as staunchly as the Mahometans for the unity of G.o.d, for with them the cosmos was G.o.d.
In shape they conceived of it as spherical, on the ground that the sphere was the perfect figure and was also the best adapted for motion. Not that the universe as a whole moved. The earth lay in its centre, spherical and motionless, and round it coursed the sun, moon, and planets, fixed each in its respective sphere as in so many concentric rings, while the outermost ring of all, which contained the fixed stars, wheeled round the rest with an inconceivable velocity.
The tendency of all things in the universe to the centre kept the earth fixed in the middle as being subject to an equal pressure on every side. The same cause also, according to Zeno, kept the universe itself at rest in the void. But in an infinite void, it could make no difference whether the whole were at rest or in motion. It may have been a desire to escape the notion of a migratory whole which led Zeno to broach the curious doctrine that the universe has no weight, as being composed of elements whereof two are heavy and two are light. Air and fire did indeed tend to the centre like everything else in the cosmos, but not till they had reached their natural home.
Till then they were of an upward-growing nature. It appears then that the upward and downward tendencies of the elements were held to neutralise one another and to leave the universe devoid of weight.
The universe was the only thing which was perfect in itself, the one thing which was an end in itself. All other things were perfect indeed as parts, when considered with reference to the whole, but were none of them ends in themselves, unless man could be deemed so who was born to contemplate the universe and imitate its perfections.
Thus, then, did the Stoics envisage the universe on its physical side--as one, finite, fixed in s.p.a.ce, but revolving round its own centre, earth, beautiful beyond all things, and perfect as a whole.
But it was impossible for this order and beauty to exist without mind. The universe was pervaded by intelligence as man's body is pervaded by his soul. But as the human soul though everywhere present in the body is not present everywhere in the same degree, so it was with the world-soul. The human soul presents itself not only as intellect, but also in the lower manifestations of sense, growth, and cohesion. It is the soul which is the cause of the plant life, which displays itself more particularly in the nails and hair; it is the soul also which causes cohesion among the parts of the solid substances such as bones and sinews, that make up our frame. In the same way the world-soul displayed itself in rational beings as intellect, in the lower animals as mere souls, in plants as nature or growth, and in inorganic substances as 'holding' or cohesion. To this lowest stage add change, and you have growth or plant nature; super-add to this phantasy and impulse and you rise to the soul of irrational animals; at a yet higher stage you reach the rational and discursive intellect, which is peculiar to man among mortal natures.
We have spoken of soul as the cause of the plant life in our bodies, but plants were not admitted by the Stoics to be possessed of soul in the strict sense. What animated them was 'nature' or, as we have called it above, 'growth'. Nature, in this sense of the principle of growth, was defined by the Stoics as 'a constructive fire, proceeding in a regular way to production,' or 'a fiery spirit endowed with artistic skill'. That Nature was an artist needed no proof, since it was her handiwork that human art essayed to copy. But she was an artist who combined the useful with the pleasant, aiming at once at beauty and convenience. In the widest sense, Nature was another name for Providence, or the principle which held the universe together, but, as the term is now being employed, it stood for that degree of existence which is above cohesion and below soul. From this point of view, it was defined as ”a cohesion subject to self originated change in accordance with seminal reasons effecting and maintaining its results in definite times, and reproducing in the offspring the characteristics of the parent”. This sounds about as abstract as Herbert Spencer's definition of life, but it must be borne in mind that nature was all the time a 'spirit', and as such a body. It was a body of a less subtle essence than soul. Similarly, when the Stoics spoke of cohesion, they are not to be taken as referring to some abstract principle like attraction. 'Cohesions,' said Chrysippus, 'are nothing else than airs, for it is by these that bodies are held together, and of the individual qualities of things which are held together by cohesion, it is the air which is the compressing cause which in iron is called ”hardness”, in stone ”thickness” and in solver ”whiteness”'. Not only solidarity then, but also colours, which Zeno called 'the first schematisms' of matter were regarded as due to the mysterious agency of air. In fact, qualities in general were but blasts and tensions of the air, which gave form and figure to the inert matter underlying them.
As the man is in one sense the soul, in another the body, and in a third the union of both, so it was with the cosmos. The word was used in three senses-- (1) G.o.d (2) the arrangement of the stars, etc.
(3) the combination of both.