Note 66 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

C. Nature of the world. Everything in the world being produced by one and the same divine power, the world, as regards its structure, is an organic whole, in respect of its (1) Its unity and perfections. constitution perfect. The unity of the world, a doctrine distinguishing the Stoics from the Epicureans, followed as a corollary from the unity of primary substance and of primary force.66 It was further proved by the intimate connection, or, as the Stoics called it, the sympathy of all its parts, and, in particular, by the coincidence of the phenomena of earth and heaven.67 The perfection of the world follows generally from a consideration of fundamental principles.68 But the Stoics made use of many arguments in support of its perfection, appealing, after the example of preceding philosophers, sometimes to its beauty, and, at other times, to the adaptation of means to ends.69 An appeal to beauty is the assertion of Chrysippus, that nature made many creatures for the sake of beauty, the peacock, for instance, for the sake of its tail70;—and the dictum of Marcus Aurelius, that what is purely subsidiary and subservient to no purpose, even what is ugly or frightful in nature, has peculiar attractions of its own;71 and the same kind of consideration may have led to the Stoic assertion, that no two things in nature are altogether alike.72 Their chief argument, however, for the beauty of the world, was based on the shape, the size, and the colour of the heavenly structure.73