Note 21 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

B. Government of the world. (1) Nature of Destiny. (a) Destiny as Providence. One point established by the generation and destruction of the world—the uncertainty of all particular things, and the unconditional dependence of everything on a universal law and the course of the universe—is a leading one in the Stoic enquiries into nature. All things in nature come about by virtue of a natural and unchangeable connection of cause and effect, as the nature of the universe and the general law require. This absolute necessity, regulating all Being and Becoming, is expressed in the conception of Fate or Destiny (ἡ εἱμαρμένη).21 Viewed from the point of view of natural science, Destiny is only another name for primary Being, for the all-pervading, all-producing Breath, for the artistic fire which is the soul of the world.22 But again the activity of this Being being always rational and according to law, Destiny may also be described as the Reason of the World, as universal Law, as the rational form of the world’s course.23 When regarded as the groundwork of natural formations, this primary Being or general Law is called Nature; but when it appears as the cause of the orderly arrangement and development of the world, it is known as Providence;24 or in popular language it is called Zeus, or the will of Zeus; and in this sense it is said that nothing happens without the will of Zeus.25 (b) Destiny as generative reason. In action as the creative force in nature, this universal Reason also bears the name of Generative Reason (λόγος σπερματικός). It bears this name more immediately in relation to the universe, not only as being the generating power by which all things are produced from primary fire as from seed according to an inner law, but because in the present condition of things all form and shape, all life and reason, grow out of it, in short, because primary fire and reason contain in themselves the germ of all things.26 In the same sense, generative powers in the plural, or λόγοι σπερματικοί, are spoken of as belonging to Deity and Nature; and in treating of man, λόγοι σπερματικοί denote the generative powers as a part of the soul, and must be thought of as bearing the same relation to the individual soul that the generative powers of Nature do to the soul of nature.27 By the term Generative Reason, therefore, must be understood the creative and forming forces in nature, which have collectively produced the universe, and particular exercises of which produce individual things. These forces, agreeably with the ordinary Stoic speculations, are spoken of as the original material, or material germ of things. On the other hand, they also constitute the form of things—the law which determines their shape and qualities, the λόγος—only we must beware of trying to think of form apart from matter. Just as the igneous or ethereal material of primary Being is in itself the same as the forming and creating element in things, the Reason of the world or the Soul of nature; so the atmospheric substance in the seeds of individual things, in which the Stoics thought the generative power (σπέρμα) alone resides,28 is in itself the germ out of which the corresponding thing is produced by virtue of an inherent law.29 The inward form is the only permanent element in things amid the perpetual change of materials.30 It constitutes the identity of the universe; and whereas matter is constantly changing from one form to another,31 the universal law of the process alone continues unchangeably the same.