Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

Ix INTRODUCTION SECT.
on skilful combination of auxiliary supports and out-
works. The monistic core is in constant danger of
falling apart, and needs ingenious buttressing. The
unity of the world was only explicable as the expression
of a single power, and Zeno ventured to assume that
power
consciousness in man. No rival theory could be said to
to be identical with that which declares itself as
hold the field, or to give satisfaction to the intellect ; and
the general position of the school might be stated thus.
Platonic theory, and still more the rarer metaphysic of
Aristotle, exacted a belief in some immaterial dpx*j or
beginning, as the first cause of all material existence.
To one disciplined in Cynic or Megarian modes of
thought, the demand was intolerable and even meaningless.
There could be neither cause .nor being without
body, which alone supplied the capacity for acting or
being acted upon. Whatever the first cause might be,
it certainly could not be incorporeal, transcendent in
other words non-existent. So far, assuredly, Democritus
was right. Upon the other hand,
assuredly one, not many.
the first cause was
The Democritean theory of
identical mechanical action in an infinite number of
isolated atoms 1 met the problem of existence and of
fixity in things. It had the advantage of the Academic
or the Peripatetic supposition in being compatible with
thought, but it was incompatible
behaviour and course
2
of things.
tradiction, though
did not attempt to give
with the observed
It involved a con-
not an absolute denial of reason. It
account of the order and un-
1 Cf. iv. 45-
2
ix. 39 ; x. 6 xi. 18.
;