The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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THE STOIC CREED
To the Epicurean, pleasure means simply the
harmonious and orderly movement of the atoms ;
while pain is the feeling that ensues when there are
jarring- and discord among them.
The case of Will is peculiar.
The Epicureans strenuously upheld, against the
Stoics, the conception of Free Will. They would not
allow fate to be absolutely supreme
: there was a
province rescued from its grasp.
This was the province
of inward mental freedom, where we find a principle
that
can
the laws of fate,"
the iron bonds of
invariable sequence (quodfatifcedera rumpat). Lucretius
distinctly designates \\.fatis avolsa potestas the power
wrested from the fates." The proof of such a power
the Epicureans found, in the first instance,
consciousness of effort in
in man s
deliberation and of causality
in volition in the effect of will in moving and guiding
the body. 1 But not here alone, if the Atomic theory is
to be thoroughgoing and effective. For, man s soul is
made up of material particles. Free will, then, must
ultimately be an inherent property of the soul-atoms.
But if of the soul-atoms, then also, more or less, of all
atoms whatsoever ;
for soul-atoms differ from others
(organic and inorganic) simply in degree of fineness,
size, and shape, not in essential quality. Hence, the
Epicureans held inconsistently with their primary
position that atoms are absolutely dead things that
atoms, taken in themselves and apart from their
aggregation
into masses of matter (which aggregation
nullifies or counteracts their inherent spontaneity)
1
Lucretius,
ii.
257-262.