erefore, be corporeal,
for "body _infinite, divisible,_ and _perishable_" (bk. vii. ch.
lxxvii.). "All the parts of the world are perishable, for they change
one into another; therefore the world is perishable" (bk. vii. ch.
lxx.). The Deity is not, therefore, absolutely identified with the world
by the Stoics. He permeates all things, creates and dissolves all
things, and is, therefore, _more_ than all things. The world is finite;
God is infinite.]

[Footnote 829: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii.
ch. lxx.]

Schwegler affirms that, in physics, the Stoics, for the most part,
followed Heraclitus, and especially "carried out the proposition that
nothing incorporeal exists; every thing is essentially _corporeal_." The
pantheism of Zeno is therefore "_materialistic._"[830] This is not a
just representation of the views of the early Stoics, and can not be
sustained by a fair interpretation of their teaching. They say that
principles and elements differ from each other. Principles have no
generation or beginning, and will have no end; but elements may be
destroyed. Also, that elements have bodies, and have forms, _but
principles have no bodies, and no forms_.[831] Principles are,
therefore, _incorporeal._ Furthermore, Cicero tells us that they taught
that the universal harmony of the world resulted from all things being
"contained by one _Divine_ SPIRIT;"[832] and also, that reason in man is
"nothing else but part of the _Divine_ SPIRIT merged into a human
body."[833] It thus seems evident that the Stoics made a distinction
between corruptible _elements_ (fire, air, earth, water) and
incorruptible _principles_, by which and out of which elements were
generated, and also between corporeal and incorporeal substances.

[Footnote 830: Schwegler's "History of Philosophy," p. 140.]

[Footnote 831: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii.
ch. lxviii.]

[Footnote 832: "De Natura Deorum," bk. ii. ch. xiii.]

[Footnote 833: Ibid, bk. ii. ch. xxxi.]

On a careful collation of the fragmentary remains of the early Stoics,
we fancy we catch glimpses of the theory held by some modern pantheists,
that the material elements, "having body and form," are a vital
transformation of the Divine substance; and that the forces of
nature--"the generating causes or reasons of things" (logoi
spermatikoi)--are a conscious transmutation of the Divine energy. This
theory is more than hinted in the following p