Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

in 2 STOIC DOGMA Ixiii
entering on these problems
it will be well to note the
corollaries for thought and life that followed from the
main position.
The principle of life impregnated all being, everywhere;
the consequence implied the presence of the
cause, and could not exist except as alive by virtue
of the inherent quickening energy. Dead matter that
is, matter uninformed with spirit involved a contradic-
tion of thought ; the negation of spirit is nothing less
than the denial of existence. The conception of God,
as the motive and sustaining power of things, was
made to tally with the scheme of monistic materialism ;
and it needed little violence to language at a time when
the material presence of God in phenomena was still
among the familiar assumptions of polytheistic belief. It
was only necessary to adapt it rigorously to the terms
of Stoic thought, and dissociate it from any suggestion
of transcendence or immateriality of being. God im-
manent in the Cosmos, not extraneous or antecedent to
it, is revealed as the one omnipresent cause and mani-
festation of life. Not only is the inherence of God a
condition and necessity of being, but God is made com-
mensurate with being : the pantheistic conception of the
world is complete and all-inclusive. God acts and inheres
in as many forms as the vital energy itself, and must be
recognised no less in the physical energies of heat, and
breath, and vital currents than in the psychical energies
of soul, and mind, and reason, or in the larger moments
of cosmic energies, which, as destiny, or providence, or
faith, rule the appointment of phenomena, and determine
the direction and the order of the evolution of the