A Guide to Stoicism 4 ¶1–2 — St. George Stock (modern guide)

St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism 4 ¶1–2

We have already had to touch upon the psychology of the Stoics in connection with the first principles of logic. It is no less necessary to do so now in dealing with the foundation of ethic. The Stoics we are told reckoned that there were eight parts of the soul. These were the five senses, the organ of sound, the intellect and the reproductive principle. The passions, it will be observed, are conspicuous by their absence. For the Stoic theory was that the passions were simply the intellect in a diseased state owing to the perversions of falsehood. This is why the Stoics would not parley with passion, conceiving that if once it were let into the citadel of the soul it would supplant the rightful ruler. Passion and reason were not two things which could be kept separate in which case it might be hoped that reason would control passion, but were two states of the same thing--a worse and a better.