The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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142 THE STOIC CREED
This, apparently, was to depart from the original
position of Zeno, that man was wholly formed out of
the divine essence, and that there is
nothing inherently
derogatory in matter, and serves to show that the strict
physical speculations of the school had ultimately but a
feeble hold on the Ethics.
The soul, on the other hand, is that part of man which
contains the master-faculty of reason, characterized by
self-consciousness and moral perception (see Epictetus,
Diss. \.
i), and therefore the authoritative and ruling
principle in man (TO ^ye/xovtKoV), that which guides him
to right thought and right action.
It is one, permeat
ing the whole body ; though to the later Stoics,
influenced by Plato, more especially to Seneca, 1 it
assumes a twofold character, inasmuch as man s nature
is cleft asunder and reason is
opposed to appetite and
passion, and the battle in the individual, as experience
testifies, is unceasing between the higher and the lower
between the spirit and the flesh. These two terms,
indeed,
spirit" and "flesh,"
are found as a contrast
in Seneca, and they signify much. The ruling faculty
is "the diviner part"
of man is "the
god within";
and it is man s peculiar glory to be swayed by it.
Hence, in distinctive Stoic phraseology,
it is man s
| prerogative to live agreeably to nature (6/AoA.oyov/xerws
fi}v,
vivere convenienter naturce],
Now, what is "living agreeably to nature"? It is,
in the first place, according to Cleanthes, living con
formably to the course of the universe ;
for the universe
is under the governance of reason, and man has it as
1
See, e.g., Ep. 71.