Note (return) — Chapter XIII

These two principles are not, however, regarded by the Stoics as having a distinct, separate, and independent existence. One is substance (οὐσία); the other is quality (ποῖος). The primordial matter is the passive ground of all existence--the original substratum for the Divine activity. The Divine Reason is the active or formative energy which dwells within, and is essentially united to, the primary substance. The Stoics, therefore, regarded all existence as reducible, in its last analysis, to one substance, which on the side of its passivity and capacity of change, they called hyle (ὕλη); 828 and on the side of its changeless energy and immutable order, they called God. The corporeal world--physical nature--is "a peculiar manifestation" of God, generated from his own substance, and, after certain periods, absorbed in himself. Thus God, considered in the evolution of His power, is nature. And nature, as attached to its immanent principle, is called God. 829 The fundamental doctrine of the Stoics was a spiritual, ideal, intellectual pantheism, of which the proper formula is, All things are God, but God is not all things.