The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 39
by, a knowledge of things human.
The ascent from TT
to is continuous, unbroken. Two errors, therefore,
are here excluded errors into which students of the
mind have frequently fallen, and which are still pitfalls :
first,
the error of supposing that psychology or study
of psychical states alone is philosophy ; secondly, the
reverse error of ignoring psychology and dealing with
metaphysics as though it had for us a wholly inde
pendent footing were entirely unrelated to, and inde
pendent of, the facts and principles of human nature.
Philosophy, in order to be correctly understood, must
neither be separated from an experiential basis nor be I
identified with the bare scientific investigation of
experience.
In another sense, also, study of the divine, as well as
of the human, is necessary namely, when we come to
deal with the practical applications of philosophy. The
two classes of interest, theoretical and practical, are so
intimately connected as to be interdependent and any
;
neglect of the one necessarily tells adversely on the
other. -The Stoics were very insistent on this point ;
and earnest ethical teachers ever since have been
equally emphatic.
Take a single example from Marcus
Aurelius. In the third book of his Meditations (iii.
13) occur these sentences: "As surgeons keep their
instruments and knives at hand for sudden calls upon
their skill, keep you your principles ever ready to test
things divine and human, in every act however trifling
remembering the mutual bond between the two. No
human act can be right without co-reference to the
divine,
and conversely."
Philosophy, then, has for its subject-matter things