Note (return) — Chapter XIII

Schwegler affirms that, in physics, the Stoics, for the most part, followed Heraclitus, and especially "carried out the proposition that nothing incorporeal exists; every thing is essentially corporeal." The pantheism of Zeno is therefore "materialistic." 830 This is not a just representation of the views of the early Stoics, and can not be sustained by a fair interpretation of their teaching. They say that principles and elements differ from each other. Principles have no generation or beginning, and will have no end; but elements may be destroyed. Also, that elements have bodies, and have forms, but principles have no bodies, and no forms. 831 Principles are, therefore, incorporeal. Furthermore, Cicero tells us that they taught that the universal harmony of the world resulted from all things being "contained by one Divine SPIRIT;" 832 and also, that reason in man is "nothing else but part of the Divine SPIRIT merged into a human body." 833 It thus seems evident that the Stoics made a distinction between corruptible elements (fire, air, earth, water) and incorruptible principles, by which and out of which elements were generated, and also between corporeal and incorporeal substances.