The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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PHYSICS: NATURE, GOD, THE SOUL 91
breast, the seat of the world s reason (so taught
Cleanthes) is the sun. 1 All things that are undergo
perpetual flux or change, and are ever passing into
something which they are not now ;
as Heracleitus put
it, "all things are in flow" (irdvTa pel), or "change is
the path upwards and downwards, and the world exists
according to 2
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Watch how all things it." continually
change, and accustom yourself to
realise that Nature s
prime delight is in changing things that are, and making
new things in their likeness. All that is, is as it were
the seed of that which shall issue from it (Aurelius,
Med. iv. 36). Hence, the world itself has only a
temporary existence. It comes from God, the primal
ether, completes its course, and then is absorbed in God
again. This takes place according to an infinite and
unvarying series of cycles. At the end of each cycle
comes a great conflagration (eKTrvpoxm) ;
and then, as
the Pythagoreans too had taught, things begin to run
their course (there is a
regeneration," or TraAiyyei/eo-i a),
in the exact same way as before : the exact same
incidents and events come round in one cycle as had
happened in the previous cycles ;
the same people, the
same experience, the same history and achievements,
the same failures are reproduced inexorable fate and
dire necessity rule all. 3 From God and to God
issuing, becoming, and reabsorption is the invariable
order ;
to be repeated times without end. In the midst
of all, what remains steadfast is the divine primal
1
Different Stoics, however, located it differently.
2
Diog. Lae rt. ix. i.
This doctrine of World-cycles had an immense fascination for,
and was elaborated by, Cleanthes ;
but many eminent Stoics (e.g.,
Panaetius) rejected it.