The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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9o THE STOIC CREED
1
man for his controller and governor."
"And from
Him [God] have descended the seeds, not only to my
father and my grandfather, but to all things that have
been begotten and are nourished on the earth, but
chiefly to those that possess reason, for these alone are
privileged by nature to hold communion with God, being
united with Him in intercourse through reason why
:
may not a man then call himself a citizen of the world ?
why not a son of God ? (Epictetus, Diss. i. 9).
This
reason is essentially "the ruling faculty" in man and
;
hence to it are subordinated the other seven parts of the
soul, namely, the five senses, speech, and reproduction.
It is significantly (so the later Stoics were fond of regard
ing it) the daemon or genius (6 SCU/AWI/),
man, his
guardian angel, given him by
in each individual
Zeus to direct
his life, as Aurelius had expressed
it in the passage
just quoted (Med. v. 27) as Menander designates it,
/Auo-raywyos TOV j3iov. Into the Universal Reason, whence
he came, man is resolved again:
"You exist but as a
part inherent in a greater whole. You will vanish into
that which gave you being ; or rather, you will be
transmuted into the seminal and universal reason
(Aurelius, iv. 14). 2 The world is a macrocosm (at least,
so taught Cleanthes), to which man is exactly corre
spondent as microcosm. The Deity, therefore, is the
soul of the world, 3 and inhabits it as Divine Reason
possessed of infinite power and transcendent wisdom,"
as well as, according to later views, of absolute good
ness and whereas in man the seat of the reason is the
;
1
Aurelius, Med. v. 27. See also Epictetus, Diss. \. 3.
See also Epictetus, Diss. i. 9.
3
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See Seneca, Qucestiones Naturales,
ii. 45.