The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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88 THE STOIC CREED
from all eternity, it is possessed of activity of thought
and of will. Endowed thus with inherent productive
power or creative activity, it is the "seminal reason"
(Xoyos o-Tre/3/xaTtKos)
of the world, manifesting itself in the
various phenomena of the universe as seminal reasons
(\6yoi o-Trep/xaTiKoi)
termed by Aurelius (Med. ix. i)
"certain
germs of future existences, [endowed with]
productive capacities of realisation, change, and pheno
menal succession." 1 This thinking volitional Ether
known technically as "artificial fire"
(TTV/O TC^VIKOV)
produces from itself the world that now is, all pheno
menal existence ; giving birth to solid and fluid, to earth
and air, etc., by means of the two principles of condensa
tion and expansion, the
solidity of matter being due to
the former, and its various qualities or attributes being
got from the latter (TOVOS, strain or tension). First, in the
order of evolution, came a fiery vapour yielding moisture
(TO vypoi/), which, by and by, condensed, and, in con
densing formed the four elements, becoming respectively
1
This conception of "the seminal reason" was a chief point
that early Christian writers (especially those who had themselves
been philosophers) laid hold of, so as to connect Greek thought
with Christian teaching-. Thus, Justin Martyr, maintaining that
every man at birth shares in the universal reason and so has in
him a \6yos o-Trepjotcm/cds (which, of course, he associated with Christ
as the Logos), holds that, on this account, men such as Socrates
who lived noble lives before the coming of Christ could be saved :
he even claimed them as Christians. Those," he says (Apology,
41), "who have lived with reason (fj.era \6yov), even though they
were reckoned atheists, are Christians, such as, among the Greeks,
Socrates, Heraclitus, and those like them." And well may
Heracleitus be included here, for the doctrine of the logos may be
said to have originally emanated from him ;
and he enunciated it
more in the spirit of a prophet making a revelation, than of a
philosopher maintaining an intellectual position hence, perhaps,
his designation "the obscure."