The contradictions of the Stoics (18-19)

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.