The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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92 THE STOIC CREED
fire, 1 consuming all, yet itself consumed by none.
Universal law, too, or fixed course of things, continues ;
so that Destiny or Fate rules the Deity,
as well as
mundane affairs. Yea, this Fate or Destiny is, from
one point of view, itself the Deity ; although, from
another point of view, the Deity
is the Reason of the
World and divine Forethought or Providence (rrpovoia).
"In the God s work there is providence everywhere.
For, the action of chance is the course of nature, or
the web and woof of the dispositions of providence.
From providence flows all ;
and side by side with it is
necessity and the advantage of the Universe, of which
you are a part (Aurelius, Med. ii.
3).^
Ill
This cosmic theory is, in many ways, a striking one,
although it does not possess for modern thought the
interest and significance of the rival Epicurean theory
which, with a difference, was that of Democritus and
the Atomists. In view of the nebular hypothesis and
of several more recent physical conceptions, a certain
scientific interest attaches to the teaching
that the
universe originated in a fiery vapour ; and if it be so,
as physicists have maintained, that the earth is destined
to be absorbed in the sun, the doctrine of the final
conflagration ceases to be an absolutely wild unbridled
fancy, and the early Christian writers were justified in
bringing it into comparison with the Scripture pre
sentation of the end of the world. 2 Perhaps, too, the
conception of recurrent cycles
and of the return of all
1
Personified as Zeus or Jupiter. See, e.g., Seneca, Ep. 9.
2 See, e.g., Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius, 33.