But we also see that, while declaring this opinion, Chrysippus does not employ the terms Necessity or Freedom of the Will: neither did his opponents, so far as we can see: they had a different and less misleading phrase. By Freedom, Chrysippus and the Stoics meant the freedom of doing what a man willed, if he willed it. A man is free, as to the thing that is in his power, when he wills it: he is not free, as to what is not in his power, under the same supposition. The Stoics laid great stress on this distinction. They pointed out how much it is really in a man's power to transform or discipline his own mind: in the way of controlling or suppressing some emotions, generating or encouraging others, forming new intellectual associations, &c., how much a man could do in these ways, _if he willed it_, and if he went through the lessons, habits of conduct, meditations, suitable to produce such an effect. The Stoics strove to create in a man's mind the volitions appropriate for such mental discipline, by depicting the beneficial consequences resulting from it, and the misfortune and shame inevitable, if the mind were not so disciplined. Their purpose was to strengthen the governing reason of his mind, and to enthrone it as a fixed habit and character, which would control by counter suggestions the impulse arising at each special moment--particularly all disturbing terrors or allurements. This, in their view, is a _free mind_; not one wherein volition is independent of all motive, but one wherein the susceptibility to different motives is tempered by an ascendant reason, so as to give predominance to the better motive against the worse. One of the strongest motives that they endeavoured to enforce, was the prudence and dignity of bringing our volitions into harmony with the schemes of Providence: which (they said) were always arranged with a view to the happiness of the kosmos on the whole. The bad man, whose volitions conflict with these schemes, is always baulked of his expectations, and brought at last against his will to see things carried by an overruling force, with aggravated pain and humiliation to himself: while the good man, who resigns himself to them from the first, always escapes with less pain, and often without any at all. _Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt_.
Science Report
Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics — Part 89
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