Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

xxvi INTRODUCTION SECT.
the other hand, accepted from Democritus just that
which the Epicureans rejected, the conception of
binding inviolable law ''All things by Law, saith
the Sage,' *
stretching in a chain of causation (physical
and moral), from the beginning of things ; but they
deny the blind clash of atoms, as the contradiction of
reason and of providence, and irreconcilable with the
facts of cosmic unity. 2 Dilemmas of logic, the argument
from design, and the occurrence of special providences,
were all brought to bear upon the materialist position ;
but among the later Stoics, as in Marcus, the entire
stress is laid upon the moral argument and the attesta-
tion of man's own consciousness.
'
Either an ordered
universe, or else a welter of confusion. Assuredly then
a world-order. Or think you that order subsisting within
yourself is compatible with disorder in the All ? ' 3 *
The
world is either a welter of alternate combination and
dispersion, or a unity of order and providence.
If the
former, why crave to linger on in such a random medley
and confusion? why take thought for anything except
the eventual "dust to dust"? . . . But on the other
alternative, I reverence, I stand stedfast, I find heart in
the power that disposes all.' 4
Belief in Cosmos, not in
Chaos, is an intellectual and still more a moral necessity,
out of which reason can only argue itself on pain of self-
1 vii. 31, with an explicit allusion to the Atomists. Cf. also
x. 25, 33 ; xi. I. In xii. 14 it is avaytcrj d^ap^lvrj, and similarly
viii. 35 ; ix. 28. Elsewhere moralised as the allotment of destiny.
2 iv. 3 ; ix. 28, 39; xi. 18 (i).
3 iv. 27. Cf. ix. 39
; x. i.
4 vi. 10, and cf. iv. 3 ; vii. 75 ; ix. 28 ; xii. 14.