Metaphysically speaking, morals may depend upon physics
and the right conduct of man be deducible from the structure of the
universe but for all that, it may be advisable to study physics
later. Physics meant the nature of God and the Universe. Our nature
may be deducible from that but it is better known to ourselves to
start with, so that it may be well to begin from the end of the stick
that we have in our hands. But that Chrysippus did teach the logical
dependence of morals on physics is plain from his own words. In his
third book on the Gods he says 'for it is not possible to find any
other origin of justice or mode of its generation save that from Zeus
and the nature of the universe for anything we have to say about good
and evil must needs derive its origin therefrom', and again in his
Physical Theses, 'for there is no other or more appropriate way of
approaching the subject of good and evil on the virtues or happiness
than from the nature of all things and the administration of the
universe--for it is to these we must attach the treatment of good and
evil inasmuch as there is no better origin to which we can refer them
and inasmuch as physical speculation is taken in solely with a view
to the distinction between good and evil.
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