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Book II Chapter 7

Descriptions Relative to a Human Being

Things are called healthful and disease causing relative to a human being, and likewise nutritious, loosening, checking, and similar things. For healthful things are those naturally suited to producing or maintaining health; disease-causing things are those disposed in the contrary way. The account of the other descriptions is similar.⁵⁰³

Divination and Its Forms

Only the virtuous person is skilled in divination, since he possesses knowledge that discerns signs from gods or divine beings bearing on human life. Hence the forms of divination also belong to him: interpretation of dreams, observation of birds, divination through sacrifice, and any other similar forms.⁵⁰⁴

Austerity

The virtuous person is called austere insofar as he neither offers anyone nor admits speech intended to curry favor.⁵⁰⁵

Cynicism

They say that the wise person will live as a Cynic, ⟨this being⟩ equivalent to persisting in Cynicism; yet, once wise, he will not begin the Cynic life.⁵⁰⁶

Love and the Formation of Friendship

They say that love is an initiative toward forming friendship because of the beauty manifest in young men in their bloom. Hence the wise person is also inclined to love and will fall in love with those worthy of love, who are well born and well endowed by nature.⁵⁰⁷

Impulse with Reservation

They say that nothing happens to the virtuous person contrary to his desire, impulse, or initiative, because he does all such things with reservation, and none of the things that oppose him comes upon him unforeseen.⁵⁰⁸

Gentleness Quietness and Orderliness

He is also gentle, gentleness being a state in virtue of which people are gently disposed toward doing what falls to them in every case, and are never carried away into anger. He is also quiet and orderly. Orderliness is knowledge of fitting movements; quietness is good order in the natural movements and rests of soul and body. The contrary qualities occur in all base people.⁵⁰⁹

Slander and True Friendship

Every noble and good person is immune to slander, being unreceptive to it. Thus he is free from slander both in this sense and by not slandering another. Slander is the separation of apparent friends by a false account. This does not happen among good men; only base people are both slandered and slanderers. Hence true friends neither slander nor suffer slander, while those who are merely thought or appear to be friends do.⁵¹⁰

Procrastination and Postponement

The virtuous person never procrastinates about anything, for procrastination is postponement of activity through reluctance. He puts some things off only when the postponement is blameless.⁵¹¹ For it was about procrastination that Hesiod said:

Do not put things off till tomorrow or the day after;

and:

The man who delays his work is always wrestling with ruin.

Procrastination brings about a falling short in the tasks that fall to one.⁵¹²

Conclusion of the Stoic Account

Let that suffice for these matters. Chrysippus discussed all the paradoxical doctrines in many other places: in On Doctrines, in Outline of the Argument, and in many other writings on particular subjects.⁵¹³ Having now adequately covered in summary the ethical doctrines ⟨that⟩ accord with the school of the Stoic philosophers, so far as I proposed to go through them, I shall end this memorandum here.⁵¹⁴

Aristotle and the Other Peripatetics

Aristotle and the other Peripatetics on ethics.⁵¹⁵

Character and Habit

He says, then, that character takes its name from habit. For where we have beginnings and seeds from nature, we acquire their perfection through habits and right training. Hence ethics too concerns habit and has to do only with living creatures, and above all with the human being.⁵¹⁶

What Can Obey Reason

The other creatures, when habituated, acquire a certain character through compulsion rather than reason. The human being, however, is shaped by reason through habituation, as the ⟨nonrational⟩ part of the soul comes to be disposed in accordance with reason. By a nonrational part of the soul is meant not what is wholly without reason, but what can obey reason, such as the part subject to feeling; ⟨and⟩ this is also receptive to virtue.⁵¹⁷

503.The opening includes the compressed καὶ ὡς τρόφιμα, “and as nutritious,” which the English takes as a parallel relative description. Λυτικά and στατικά are literally loosening and stopping or checking; Wachsmuth explains that both have medical usage. They are retained as descriptions of bodily effects, rather than silently changing λυτικά to a proposed word for analysis. The definition distinguishes producing health from maintaining it and defines the contrary relationally.

504.The definition specifies knowledge of signs and their bearing on human life. Δαίμονες are divine beings in this context. The three named forms retain their distinct objects, and “any other similar forms” leaves the list open. Compare II.7.5b12, where the related account of specialized pursuits also requires the acquisition of additional principles in some cases; that earlier qualification has not been inserted into the present wording.

505.Πρὸς χάριν qualifies the speech as aimed at pleasing or gaining favor. The denial covers both offering and receiving it. This account of austerity should be read with the earlier description of the virtuous person as gracious and persuasive, II.7.11m.3: its stated object is speech aimed at favor, not every form of agreeable company.

506.The distinction is between continuing in Cynicism and beginning it when already wise. “Once wise” expresses σοφὸν ὄντα, being wise, rather than a change added to the doctrine. Cynicism names the philosophical way of life. Wachsmuth supplies ὄν after ἴσον; its English equivalent remains bracketed. Compare Diogenes Laertius VII.121 for the related report that the wise person will practice Cynicism; the present restriction on beginning it is retained.

507.The definition recalls II.7.5b9.2–3 and II.7.10c.2; ἐπιβολή retains “initiative,” as in the account of impulse. Νέων ὡραίων places the love in the ancient setting of young men in their bloom, without specifying an exact age. The final εὐγενῶν and εὐφυῶν repeat the terms discussed at II.7.11m.1–2, where the reported definitions admit acquired as well as inherited or natural qualifications.

508.Ὑπεξαίρεσις is reservation or an exception kept in view when acting. The explanation therefore qualifies the desire, impulse, and initiative themselves; it does not say that no external obstruction occurs. The final clause calls what opposes him ἀπρόληπτον when it is unforeseen or not anticipated. The English retains that qualification rather than changing it to a denial that anything can oppose him.

509.The definitions distinguish gentleness as a ἕξις, state, orderliness as knowledge, and quietness as good order. Quietness includes both movements and rests, μονάς, of soul and body; it is not simply immobility. The qualifications “in every case” and “never” preserve the scope of the claim about the virtuous person, as does the final “all” concerning the base.

510.Ἀδιάβολος is explained in both a receptive and an active sense: not admitting slander and not slandering another. The definition gives slander a particular effect, separating apparent friends through a false account. The distinction between true and apparent friendship governs the denial; the text does not deny that someone can utter a false accusation against a good person. Compare the strict account of friendship at II.7.11m.5.

511.Ἀναβολή is defined here by ὄκνος, reluctance or shrinking from action, while ὑπέρθεσις is postponement more generally and can be blameless. The English reads τινα as some things postponed and retains the condition on permissible postponement. The distinction prevents the opening denial from becoming a ban on every change of timing.

512.Wachsmuth cites the verses as Hesiod, Works and Days 408 and 411; they correspond to 410 and 413 in the common modern numbering. His first quotation ends ἔνηφι, without the final ν recorded for Hesiod in the apparatus. Ἄτῃσι is ruin or destructive misfortune, retaining the wrestling image. The editorial references have been transferred from the Greek sentence to this note. The rejected δ’ remains bracketed in Greek and is omitted in English.

513.Παράδοξα are doctrines contrary to ordinary expectation or opinion; the word does not by itself declare them contradictions. The two named works belong to Chrysippus. Their titles are references to fuller discussions, not promises that those works will be reproduced in this volume.

514.The first-person speaker belongs to the ethical exposition preserved by Stobaeus; it is not this translator announcing the end of the book. Wachsmuth supplies τῶν to introduce the qualification of the ethical doctrines, expressed by bracketed “that” in English. Ἐν κεφαλαίοις is in summary or under principal heads, and ὑπομνηματισμός is a memorandum or written account. This concludes the Stoic account, not Chapter 7. The next section, II.7.13, turns to Aristotle and the other Peripatetics.

515.This is the source heading introducing a new account after the Stoic exposition. It identifies the doctrines under discussion; it does not make the following epitome a continuous verbatim quotation from Aristotle. The opening φησίν, “he says,” is rendered without supplying a further personal name. Numerical subdivisions within II.7.13 divide the long source account for layout only.

516.The Greek links ἦθος, character, with ἔθος, habit, and plays on ἠθική and ἐθική, ethical and habitual. Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1103a17–25, where moral virtue is acquired through habit and its name is related to ἔθος. “Living creatures” renders ζῷα; the passage itself immediately distinguishes the other creatures from the human being. Natural beginnings and seeds are not identified with already perfected virtue.

517.Wachsmuth supplies τοῦ ἀλόγου and δέ; their English equivalents remain bracketed. The distinction is between what is altogether without reason and what can listen to reason without itself being the reasoning faculty. Παθητικόν names the part capable of being affected or feeling. Compare Nicomachean Ethics I.13, 1102b13–1103a3. The English retains the account’s contrast between compulsion in the other creatures and rational formation in human habituation.