II.—­In the PSYCHOLOGY of the Stoics, two questions, are of interest, their theory of Pleasure and Pain, and their views upon the Freedom of the Will.

1. The theory of Pleasure and Pain.  The Stoics agreed with the Peripatetics (anterior to Epicurus, not specially against him) that the first principle of nature is (not pleasure or relief from pain, but) self-preservation or self-love; in other words, the natural appetite or tendency of all creatures is, to preserve their existing condition with its inherent capacities, and to keep clear of destruction or disablement.  This appetite (they said) manifests itself in little children before any pleasure or pain is felt, and is moreover a fundamental postulate, pre-supposed in all desires of particular pleasures, as well as in all aversions to particular pains.  We begin by loving our own vitality; and we come, by association, to love what promotes or strengthens our vitality; we hate destruction or disablement, and come (by secondary association) to hate whatever produces that effect.[8] The doctrine here laid down associated, and brought under one view, what was common to man, not merely with the animal, but also with the vegetable world; a plant was declared to have an impulse or tendency to maintain itself, even without feeling pain or pleasure.  Aristotle (in the tenth Book of the Ethics) says, that he will not determine whether we love life for the sake of pleasure, or pleasure for the sake of life; for he affirms the two to be essentially yoked together and inseparable; pleasure is the consummation of our vital manifestations.  The Peripatetics, after him, put pleasure down to a lower level, as derivative and accidental; the Stoics went farther in the same direction—­possibly from antithesis against the growing school of Epicurus.

The primary officium (in a larger sense than our word Duty) of man is (they said) to keep himself in the state of nature; the second or derivative officium is to keep to such things as are according to nature, and to avert those that are contrary to nature; our gradually increasing experience enabled us to discriminate the two.  The youth learns, as he grows up, to value bodily accomplishments, mental cognitions and judgments, good conduct towards those around him,—­as powerful aids towards keeping up the state of nature.  When his experience is so far enlarged as to make him aware of the order and harmony of nature and human society, and to impress upon him the comprehension of this great ideal, his emotions as well as his reason become absorbed by it.  He recognizes this as the only true Bonum or Honestum, to which all other desirable things are referable,—­as the only thing desirable for itself and in its own nature.  He drops or dismisses all those prima naturae that he had begun by desiring.  He no longer considers any of them as worthy of being desired in itself, or for its own sake.