Page:The hymn of Cleanthes; Greek text tr. into English (IA hymnofcleanthesg00clearich).pdf/16

 12 We may recall here the Orphic lines:

The pantheistic sense of the word (v. 2) ought not to be overlooked. God, in the Stoic creed, was not personal (in the Christian sense), but an unknown living Power immanent in Nature—natura naturans,.


 * see Driver on Gen. i. 3. Philo describes the spirit (the essence of man's rational part) as a “figure and impress of divine power,” and goes on to say (i.e.  of which God is the ); cf. Musonius ap. Stob. . Clem. Rom. speaks of man as an impress of the divine image (ad Cor. i. 33; cf. Heb. i. 3); so in Wisd. ii. 23 we read, “God created man to be immortal and made him to be an image of His own eternity” (proper being, R. V.). Plat. Tim. 37ᶜ develops this thought. For the sense cf. Hom. Il. xvii. 447, Odyss. xviii. 131.

6. Cf. Ps. cxlv. 1. Aratus, Phænom. I, |.

7. Cleanthes seems here to be endeavouring to interpret the Cynic formula, “live agreeably to nature”. But in his hands it gets an added meaning, for in nature —whether the nature of things or man's inward nature—the Stoic doctor finds a common reason and a common law. See James Seth’s Study of Ethical Principles (chapter on “Rigorism”); Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, lect. i.

We may illustrate the religious attitude of Cleanthes still further by the lines reproduced by Epictetus (Enchirid. 53):