The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

1
86 THE STOIC CREED
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1
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tending , infinitely diverse impulses." To him,
"the
many are the moving realisation of the Eternal One.
Being was always
*
becoming not a state but a
*
1
process, not rest but motion and its true image was
the flame which in kindling extinguishes, and in ex
tinguishing kindles that which is its fuel. . . . His two
cardinal contributions to physics were, his resolution of
mechanical change into continuous dynamical progress,
and, as its consequent, the idea of an unbroken sequence
of successions, constituting an invariable cosmic march
or rhythm of events, which might be personified as an
unalterable cosmic will or destiny (Suo;,
Xoyos, et/xap/xeViy),
or generalised into an abstract uniformity of natural
law. He himself persistently interpreted
it as the
expression of an ethical order and his
; followers, the
school of Ephesus, continued to be the avowed and
scornful antagonists of all who remained content with
base materialistic Sensationalism."
The primitive matter, according to Heracleitus, was
Fire, rationally determined from this all things orderly
:
proceed, and by it they are all consumed. "This one
order of all things,"
he says,
"was created by none of
the gods, nor yet by any of mankind, but it ever was,
and is, and shall be eternal fire ignited by measure,
and extinguished by
measure." 3
Thus,
in the midst of
all diversity and change, there is rational order,
universal causality ;
and man s wisdom lies in recogni-
1
Walter Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 12.
2 Principal Rendall, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus To Himself,
pp. xviii and xx. See also Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i. 73-79 ;
and Windelband, A History of Philosophy, part
i.
chap. i.
sec. 4.
3
Quoted by Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i. 64.