The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

PHYSICS: NATURE, GOD, THE SOUL 85
The problem was, Given the universe, with our multi
farious experiences of it and our relations to it, how
are we to interpret it ? Clearly, the interpreting term
must be the principle of unity. But this unity must
not be incompatible with plurality and diversity ;
otherwise, we have not explained the world that we
know, but have merely ignored a prominent factor
it. In our experience, things change. But, in order
to change, there must be presupposed something
changeless, law, or process, or substance. There
are differences on all hands in nature ;
and if these are
to be gathered up in a unity, that unity must be one
from which they are also seen to emerge. In the
solution, God, the World, and the human Soul must
all find a place ;
and there must also bej^nJEiscJiatplpgy,
or doctrine of last things.
in
The problem was not new to thinking minds how
could it, as curiosity is natural to man ? It had been
bravely faced by the pre-Socratic philosophers, and
solutions on two distinct lines had been offered of it.
The Eleatics had fixed exclusively on the unity, and
had denied the possibility of change, regarding it
simply
as a delusion of the senses. Heracleitus of
Ephesus, "the obscure," started with plurality and
change, with the perpetual
motion and transmutation
that are discernible alike in human consciousness and
in outward nature, and explained them in the light of
the world-ruling reason, the cosmic logos, the permanent
u antiphonal rhythm," "which, proceeding uniformly
from movement to movement, as in some intricate
musical theme, might link together in one those con-