Note 80 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

(3) Boëthus dissents from the pantheism of the Stoics. Boëthus alone dissented from the pantheism of the Stoics by making a real distinction between God and the world. Agreeing with the other Stoics in considering deity to be an ethereal Substance,80 he would not allow that it resided, as the Soul, within the whole world, and, consequently, he refused to call the world a living being.81 Instead of doing so, he placed the seat of deity in the highest of the heavenly spheres, the sphere of the fixed stars, and made it operate upon the world from this abode.82 The opposite view detracted, in his eyes, from the unchangeable and exalted character of the divine Being. How anxious he was to vindicate that character will also be seen in the way in which he differed from his fellow-Stoics in reference to the destruction of the world.