A Little Book of Stoicism | Page 5

nothing of
disquisitions on the senses and the intellect which we should now refer
to psychology.
Logic as a whole being divided into rhetoric and dialectic: rhetoric was
defined to be the knowledge of how to speak well in expository
discourses and dialectic as the knowledge of how to argue rightly in
matters of question and answer. Both rhetoric and dialectic were
spoken of by the Stoics as virtues for they divided virtue in its most
generic sense in the same way as they divided philosophy into physical,
ethical, and logical. Rhetoric and dialectic were thus the two species of
logical virtue. Zeno expressed their difference by comparing rhetoric to
the palm and dialectic to the fist.
Instead of throwing in poetic and grammar with rhetoric, the Stoics
subdivided dialectic into the part which dealt with the meaning and the
part which dealt with the sound, or as Chrysippus phrased it,
concerning significants and significates. Under the former came the
treatment of the alphabet, of the parts of speech, of solecism, of
barbarism, of poems, of amphibolies, of metre and music--a list which
seems at first sight a little mixed, but in which we can recognise the
general features of grammar, with its departments of phonology,
accidence, and prosody. The treatment of solecism and barbarism in
grammar corresponded to that of fallacies in logic. With regard to the
alphabet it is worth noting that the Stoics recognised seven vowels and
six mutes. This is more correct than our way of talking of nine mutes,
since the aspirate consonants are plainly not mute. There were,
according to the Stoics, five parts of speech--name, appellative, verb,
conjunction, article. 'Name' meant a proper name, and 'appellative' a
common term.
There were reckoned to be five virtues of speech--Hellenism, clearness,
conciseness, propriety, distinction. By 'Hellenism' was meant speaking
good Greek. 'Distinction' was defined to be 'a diction which avoided
homeliness.' Over against these there were two comprehensive vices,
barbarism and solecism, the one being an offence against accidence, the

other against syntax.
The famous comparison of the infant mind to a blank sheet of paper,
which we connect so closely with the name of Locke, really comes
from the Stoics. The earliest characters inscribed upon it were the
impressions of sense, which the Greeks called "phantasies." A phantasy
was defined by Zeno as "an impression in the soul." Cleanthes was
content to take this definition in its literal sense, and believe that the
soul was impressed by external objects as wax by a signet ring.
Chrysippus, however, found a difficulty here, and preferred to interpret
the Master's saying to mean an alteration or change in the soul. He
figured to himself the soul as receiving a modification from every
external object which acts upon it just as the air receives countless
strokes when many people are speaking at once. Further, he declared
that in receiving an impression the soul was purely passive and that the
phantasy revealed not only its own existence, but that also of its cause,
just as light displays itself and the things that are in it. Thus, when
through sight we receive an impression of white, an affection takes
place in the soul, in virtue whereof we are able to say that there exists a
white object affecting us. The power to name the object resides in the
understanding. First must come the phantasy, and the understanding,
having the power of utterance, expresses in speech the affection it
receives from the object. The cause of the phantasy was called the
"phantast," e. g. the white or cold object. If there is no external cause,
then the supposed object of the impression was a "phantasm," such as a
figure in a dream, or the Furies whom Orestes sees in his frenzy.
How then was the impression which had reality behind it to be
distinguished from that which had not? "By the feel" is all that the
Stoics really had to say in answer to this question. Just as Hume made
the difference between sense-impressions and ideas to lie in the greater
vividness of the former, so did they; only Hume saw no necessity to go
beyond the impression, whereas the Stoics did. Certain impressions,
they maintained, carried with them an irresistible conviction of their
own reality, and this, not merely in the sense that they existed; but also
that they were referable to an external cause. These were called
"gripping phantasies." Such a phantasy did not need proof of its own

existence, or of that of its object. It possessed self-evidence. Its
occurrence was attended with yielding and assent on the part of the soul.
For it is as natural for the soul to assent to the self-evident as it is for it
to pursue its proper good. The assent to a griping