The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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PHYSICS: NATURE, GOD, THE SOUL 89
fire, water, air, earth ;
1
so that the four elements are
but tension in different degrees or grades. By the
intermingling of its elements the individual thing is
produced. 2 This is the celebrated theory of mixture, or
Kpaa-Ls Si oXov, which is in effect a denial of the axiom
that two bodies cannot occupy the same 3
All
space."
things that exist in the world thus partake of the divine
substance, but in different degrees. What appears in
inorganic matter as cohesion or "hold" (eis), becomes
in plants
"vital force" (Averts), manifesting living
growth; in animals, "soul irrational" (i/o^r) aXoyos),
endowed, perhaps, with the power of inference (which
Chrysippus, for instance, allowed to dogs), but devoid
of self-consciousness and ignorant of the meaning of
existence; in man, as "soul rational," possessed of
self-consciousness and the higher thought (^x^ Aoyov
e^ovo-a). 4 The heavenly bodies, sun, moon, stars, and
planets, inasmuch as they are made of very pure fire,
stand specially near to God, and may be themselves
regarded as divinities their :
unsurpassed brilliancy and
heat and the regularity of their movements seemed to
sanction that conception. Man shows in himself the
divine especially, in his soul ; and, indeed, according
Zeno, he was originally formed out of the divine
substance is con-substantial with the divine. Under
any circumstances, his Reason (Aoyog, TO ^ye/xoviKoy) is a
ray of the celestial fire, a spark from the primal ether
"that
particle of Zeus, which Zeus gives to every
1
See Diog. Laert. vii. 135.
Ibid. vii. 151.
3
Pearson, The Fragments of Zcno and Cleanthes, p. 1 1.
4 See Sextus Empiricus, ix. 81 and viii. 2 ; also, Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations )
vi. 14.