Ethics 191
Diogenes, Anti pater and Posidonius. For Zeno of Citium and Cleanthes,
as might be expected from earlier thinkers, made less elaborate distinctions
in their subject matter. But they did divide both logic and physics.
- They say that an animal's first [or primary] impulse is to preserve
itself, because nature made it congenial to itself from the beginning, as
Chrysippus says in book one of On Goals, stating that for every animal
its first [sense of] congeniality is to its own constitution and the reflective
awareness of this. For it is not likely that nature would make an animal
alienated from itself, nor having made the animal, to make it neither
congenial to nor alienated from itself. Therefore, the remaining possibility
is to say that having constituted the animal she made it congenial to
itself. For in this way it repels injurious influences and pursues that
which is congenial to it.
The Stoics claim that what some people say is false, viz. that the
primary [or first] impulse of animals is to pleasure. 86. For they say that
pleasure is, if anything, a byproduct which supervenes when nature itself,
on its own, seeks out and acquires what is suitable to [the animal's]
constitution. It is like the condition of thriving animals and plants in top
condition. And nature, they say, did not operate differently in the cases
of plants and of animals; for it directs the life of plants too, though
without impulse and sense-perception, and even in us some processes
are plant-like. When, in the case of animals, impulse is added (which
they use in the pursuit of things to which they have an affinity), then
for them what is natural is governed by what is according to impulse.
When reason has been given to rational animals as a more perfect governor
[of life], then for them the life according to reason properly becomes
what is natural for them. For reason supervenes on impulse as a craftsman.
- Thus Zeno first, in his book On the Nature of Man, said that the goal
was to live in agreement with nature, which is to live according to virtue.
For nature leads us to virtue. And similarly Cleanthes in On Pleasure
and Posidonius and Hecaton in their books On the Goal.
Again, "to live according to virtue" is equivalent to living according
to the experience of events which occur by nature, as Chrysippus says
in book one of his On Goals. 88. For our natures are parts of the nature
of the universe. Therefore, the goal becomes "to live consistently with
nature", i.e., according to one's own nature and that of the universe,
doing nothing which is forbidden by the common law, which is right
reason, penetrating all things, being the same as Zeus who is the leader
of the administration of things. And this itself is the virtue of the happy
man and a smooth flow of life, whenever all things are done according
to the harmony of the daimon in each of us with the will of the
