Even the Epicureans, who are
said to have rejected logic can hardly be counted as dissentients
from this threefold division. For what they did was to substitute for
the Stoic logic a logic of their own, dealing with the notions
derived from sense, much in the same way as Bacon substituted his
Novum Organum for the Organon of Aristotle. Cleanthes we are told
recognised six parts of philosophy, namely, dialectic, rhetoric,
ethic, politic, physic, and theology, but these are obviously the
result of subdivision of the primary ones. Of the three departments
we may say that logic deals with the form and expression of
knowledge, physic with the matter of knowledge, and ethic with the
use of knowledge. The division may also be justified in this way.
Philosophy must study either nature (including the divine nature) or
man; and, if it studies man, it must regard him either from the side
of the intellect or of the feelings, that is either as a thinking
(logic) or as an acting (ethic) being.
As to the order in which the different departments should he studied,
we have had preserved to us the actual words of Chrysippus in his
fourth book on Lives.
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