A Little Book of Stoicism | Page 7

as a
phantasm of the understanding of a rational animal. For a notion was
but a phantasm as it presented itself to a rational mind. In the same way
so many shillings and sovereigns are in themselves but shillings and
sovereigns, but when used as passage money they become fare. Notions
were arrived at partly by nature, partly by teaching and study. The
former kind of notions were called preconceptions; the latter went
merely by the generic name.
Out of the general ideas which nature imparts to us, reason was
perfected about the age of fourteen, at the time when the voice--its
outward and visible sign--attains its full development, and when the
human animal is complete in other respects as being able to reproduce
its kind. Thus reason which united us to the gods was not, according to
the Stoics, a pre-existent principal, but a gradual development out of
sense. It might truly be said that with them the senses were the intellect.
Being was confined by the Stoics to body, a bold assertion of which we
shall meet the consequences later. At present it is sufficient to notice
what havoc it makes among the categories. Of Aristotle's ten categories
it leaves only the first, Substance, and that only in its narrowest sense
of Primary Substance. But a substance or body might be regarded in
four ways-- (1) simply as a body (2) as a body of a particular kind (3)
as a body in a particular state (4) as a body in a particular relation.

Hence result the four Stoic categories of-- substrates suchlike so
disposed so related
But the bodiless would not be thus conjured out of existence. For what
was to be made of such things as the meaning of words, time, place,
and the infinite void? Even the Stoics did not assign body to these, and
yet they had to be recognized and spoken of. The difficulty was got
over by the invention of the higher category of somewhat, which
should include both body and the bodiless. Time was a somewhat, and
so was space, though neither of them possessed being.
In the Stoic treatment of the proposition, grammar was very much
mixed up with logic. They had a wide name which applied to any part
of diction, whether a word or words, a sentence, or even a syllogism.
This we shall render by "dict." A dict, then, was defined as "that which
subsists in correspondence with a rational phantasy." A dict was one of
the things which the Stoics admitted to be devoid of body. There were
three things involved when anything was said--the sound, the sense,
and the external object. Of these the first and the last were bodies, but
the intermediate one was not a body. This we may illustrate after
Seneca, as follows: "You see Cato walking. What your eyes see and
your mind attends to is a body in motion. Then you say, 'Cato is
walking'." The mere sound indeed of these words is air in motion and
therefore a body but the meaning of them is not a body but an
enouncement about a body, which is quite a different thing.
On examining such details as are left us of the Stoic logic, the first
thing which strikes one is its extreme complexity as compared with the
Aristotelian. It was a scholastic age, and the Stoics refined and
distinguished to their hearts' content. As regards immediate inference, a
subject which has been run into subtleties among ourselves, Chrysippus
estimated that the changes which could be rung on ten propositions
exceeded a million, but for this assertion he was taken to task by
Hipparchus the mathematician, who proved that the affirmative
proposition yielded exactly 103,049 forms and the negative 310,962.
With us the affirmative proposition is more prolific in consequences
than the negative. But then, the Stoics were not content with so simple

a thing as mere negation, but had negative arnetic and privative, to say
nothing of supernegative propositions. Another noticeable feature is the
total absence of the three figures of Aristotle and the only moods
spoken of are the moods of the complex syllogism, such as the modus
penens in a conjunctive. Their type of reasoning was-- If A, then B But
A B
The important part played by conjunctive propositions in their logic led
the Stoics to formulate the following rule with regard to the material
quality of such propositions: Truth can only be followed by truth, but
falsehood may be followed by falsehood or truth.
Thus if it be truly stated that it is day, any consequence of that
statement, e.g. that it is light, must be true also. But a false statement
may lead either way. For instance, if it be falsely stated that it is night
then