Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

ii 2 BIRTH OF STOICISM xxxix
the corrections of experience and consciousness, and
by processes of pure logic was led to deny the reality
of matter, of motion, of becoming, indeed of everything
except the content of the equation, 'That which is, is.'
Methods closely resembling those of the Eleatics, though
somewhat less material in scope, led him to similar
results, and he imputed to the one abiding reality,
which he called
'
the Good,' those attributes which
Parmenides had assigned to real being. Aided by a
brilliant and magnetic personality, Stilpo at Megara
succeeded in fusing this logical conception of the
abiding One with the naturalist morality of the Cynic
school. Such a fusion gave small promise of fertile
result, for the two combined not so much by natural
and organic coherence, as by a rigorous severance of
sphere, which rather excluded contradictions than assured
agreement. Logic was detached from life, and transcendental
being was put out of touch with phenomenal
existence ; no reconciliation or communication was
provided between the One or the Good, the finite reason
of man, and the infinite multiplicity of phenomenal
change. Such was the position when Zeno appeared
upon the scene.
Hitherto we have referred only, or chiefly, to ethical
modifications of the extreme Cynic position.
But other
elements, not less important, went to the making of
Stoicism as a coherent body of thought Born at
Citium, and of Phoenician lineage, it seems probable that
Zeno had early imbibed the theistic or monotheistic
conceptions of the East; the Oriental strain, which re-
appears in almost every representative of the School, can