Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

INTRODUCTION SECT.
of Heraclitus, which represented the least material
form of being, and in '
the upward and downward flow '
mediated the passage of elements from phase to phase.
The modus operandi was mainly conceived and stated
in terms of Heraclitean physics. At the same time,
while in respect of material nature and dynamical virtue
the Stoic Pneuma borrowed largely from the Heraclitean
Fire, there yet remains, behind many striking resem-
blances of function, attribute, and nomenclature, the
broad distinction that, while the fire of Heraclitus is
itself a phase or mode in the mutations of being, the
Fire or Spirit of the Stoics is the indefectible and all-
pervasive unit and cause of all Being.
Its nature was material. To the Stoic every form of
causation, just as much as every imparted motion, implies
bodily action, and cannot be conceived in any other
way ; so that not only
sensation and emotion as the
physical effects of shame, anger, or the like sufficiently
demonstrate but also thoughts and qualities, memories
and imaginations, nay, even intellectual abstractions,
such as time or parts of time, possess corporeal existence.
And thus, in whatever category conceived corporeal,
psychical, or cosmic, whether as Air, Fire, Soul, Destiny,
or God '
the life-giving reason '
of things remains always
equally and unchangeably material ; while, conversely,
matter is only and always a mode of spirit, and the
material world is not merely comprehended and sus-
tained, but at every moment existent only through the
present immanence and virtue of life-giving spirit.
Thus the whole conception of being becomes in its
essence dynamical, and while the Stoic vies with the