Note 15 — Chapter XIV · THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY AS A WHOLE AND ITS HISTORICAL POSITION.

(3) Connection with Aristotle. Shall we be wrong if we attribute this modification of the Heraclitean theory of nature by the Stoics partly to the influence of Socrates’ and Plato’s theory of final causes, but in a still greater degree to the influence of the Aristotelian philosophy? To Aristotle belongs properly the idea of matter without qualities, no less than the distinction between a material and a formal cause. Aristotle applied the idea of purpose to natural science far more extensively than any other system had done before; and although the mode in which the Stoics expressed this idea has more resemblance to the popular theological statements of Socrates and Plato than to Aristotle, still the Stoic conception of a natural power working with a purpose, such as is contained in the idea of artificial fire and λόγοι σπερματικοὶ, is essentially Aristotelian. Even many positions which appear to be advanced in opposition to Aristotle were yet connected with him. Thus the existence of ether as a body distinct from the four elements is denied, and yet in point of fact it is asserted under a new name—that of artificial fire. The Peripatetic doctrine of the origin of the rational soul is contradicted by the Stoic theory of development, and yet the latter is based on a statement in Aristotle to the effect that the germ of the animal soul lies in the warm air15 which surrounds the seed, warm air which Aristotle distinguishes from fire quite as carefully as Zeno and Cleanthes distinguished the two kinds of fire. Even the point of greatest divergence from Aristotelian teaching—the transformation of the human soul and the divine spirit into something corporeal—might yet be connected with Aristotle, and, indeed, the Peripatetic School here comes to their assistance. For had not Aristotle described the ether as the most divine body, the stars formed out of it as divine and happy beings? Had he not brought down the acting and moving forces from a heavenly sphere to the region of earth? Had he not, as we have just seen, sought the germ of the soul in an ethereal matter? And might not others go a little further and arrive at materialistic views? and all the more so, seeing how hard it is to conceive the extra-mundane intelligence of Aristotle, at once as incorporeal, and yet touching and encircling the world of matter, and to make personal unity in the human soul accord with an origin in a reason coming from above?