Page:Marcus Aurelius (Haines 1916).djvu/31

STOICISM Force, acting as igneous or atmospheric current upon inert matter, evolved out of itself a Cosmos, subsequent modifications being by way of consequence. This Universe is periodically destroyed by fire, thus returning again to its pristine Being, only however to be created anew on the same plan even to the smallest details; and so on for ever.

God and Matter being thus indistinguishable, for all that was not God in its original form was God in an indirect sense as a manifestation of him, the Stoic creed was inevitably pantheistic. It was also materialistic; for the Stoics, allowing existence to nothing incorporeal, by means of their strange theory of air-currents inherent even in abstract things such as virtue, rendered not only them but God himself corporeal, terming him the "perfect living Being." But their conceptions on this point seem to be really irreconcilable, for while on the one hand they speak of the Supreme Power by such names as Zeus, Cause or Force, Soul, Mind, or Reason of the Universe, Law or Truth, Destiny, Necessity, Providence, or Nature of the Whole, on the other they identify it with such terms as Fiery Fluid, or Heat, Ether (warm air) or Pneuma (atmospheric current).