Note (return) — Chapter XIII

On a careful collation of the fragmentary remains of the early Stoics, we fancy we catch glimpses of the theory held by some modern pantheists, that the material elements, "having body and form," are a vital transformation of the Divine substance; and that the forces of nature--"the generating causes or reasons of things" (λόγοι σπερµατικοί)--are a conscious transmutation of the Divine energy. This theory is more than hinted in the following passages, which we slightly transpose from the order in which they stand in Diogenes Laertius, without altering their meaning. "They teach that the Deity was in the beginning by himself".... that "first of all, he made the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth." "The fire is the highest, and that is called æther, in which, first of all, the sphere was generated in which the fixed stars are set...; after that the air; then the water; and the sediment, as it were, of all, is the earth, which is placed in the centre of the rest." "He turned into water the whole substance which pervaded the air; and as the seed is contained in the product, so, too, He, being the seminal principle of the world, remained still in moisture, making matter fit to be employed by himself in the production of things which were to come after." 834 The Deity thus draws the universe out of himself, transmuting the divine substance into body and form. "God is a being of a certain quality, having for his peculiar manifestation universal substance. He is a being imperishable, and who never had any generation, being the maker of the arrangement and order that we see; and who at certain periods of time absorbs all substance in himself and then reproduces it from himself." 835 And now, in the last analysis, it would seem as though every thing is resolved into force. God and the world are power, and its manifestation, and these are ultimately one. "This identification of God and the world, according to which the Stoics regarded the whole formation of the universe as but a period in the development of God, renders their remaining doctrine concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the world seemed to be permeated by the Divine life, and was regarded as the flowing out of this most perfect life through certain channels, until it returns, in a necessary circle, back to itself." 836