Note 19 — Chapter XII · APPLIED MORAL SCIENCE.

The Stoics were, nevertheless, not disposed to let the current beliefs quite fall through. Far from it, they thought to discover real germs of truth in these beliefs, however inadequate they were in form. They accordingly made it their business to give a relative vindication to the existing creed. Holding that the name of God belongs, in its full and original sense, only to the one primary Being, they did not hesitate to apply it, in a limited and derivative sense, to all those objects by means of which the divine power is especially manifested. Nay, more, in consideration of man’s relationship to God, they found it not unreasonable to deduce from the primary Being Gods bearing a resemblance to men.19 Hence they distinguished, as Plato had done, between the eternal and immutable God and Gods created and transitory,20 between God the Creator and Sovereign of the world, and subordinate Gods;21 in other words, between the universal divine power as a Unity working in the world, and its individual parts and manifestations.22 To the former they gave the name Zeus; to the latter they applied the names of the other subordinate Gods.