The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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PHYSICS: NATURE, GOD, THE SOUL 87
tion of this and in submission: "Therefore, we ought
to follow the universal ; but, though the logos is
of men live as
though they had
universal, the majority
an intelligence of their own tStav (d>s e^ovre? (frpovycrw,
Sextus Empiricus, vii. "
133) they do not understand
:
how that which is discordant is concordant with itself:
as with the bow and the lyre, so with the world it is
the tension of opposing forces that makes the structure
one." Such universal order, harmonizing opposites,
is
designated by Heracleitus logos to which are
ascribed, besides
unity and rationality, eternity, omni
presence, and divinity. It is the eternal divine reason
immanent in the world, and finding its highest interpre
tation in ethical order.
II
It was to Heracleitus that the Stoics attached
themselves in Physics, although they did not by any
means follow him slavishly. On the contrary, their
deep religious sentiment and their leanings towards a
theistic interpretation of the world (seen conspicuously
in the Later Stoa) led them to part from him at many
points.
They began, in true monistic fashion, by positing a
primitive substance. This primitive substance, or
original source of all things, is Fire fire, however, not
in its grosser earthly form, but as a sublimated allpervasive
essence or ether, denominated (though not by
the Stoics themselves) "ethereal fire"
called by Cleanthes "fiery breath"
(rrvp cutfepwSes),
(Trvev/xa).
This
primordial fire, which is also the Deity, is eternal ;
and