assages, which we slightly
transpose from the order in which they stand in Diogenes Laertius,
without altering their meaning. "They teach that the Deity was in the
beginning by _himself_".... that "first of all, he made the four
elements, fire, water, air, and earth." "The fire is the highest, and
that is called aether, in which, first of all, the sphere was generated
in which the fixed stars are set...; after that the air; then the water;
and the sediment, as it were, of all, is the earth, which is placed in
the centre of the rest." "He turned into water the whole substance which
pervaded the air; and as the seed is contained in the product, so, too,
He, being the seminal principle of the world, remained still in
moisture, making matter fit to be employed by himself in the production
of things which were to come after."[834] The Deity thus draws the
universe out of himself, transmuting the divine substance into body and
form. "God is a being of a certain quality, having for his peculiar
manifestation universal substance. He is a being imperishable, and who
never had any generation, being the maker of the arrangement and order
that we see; and who at certain periods of time _absorbs all substance
in himself and then reproduces it from himself_."[835] And now, in the
last analysis, it would seem as though every thing is resolved into
_force_. God and the world are _power, and its manifestation_, and these
are ultimately one. "This identification of God and the world, according
to which the Stoics regarded the whole formation of the universe as but
a period in the development of God, renders their remaining doctrine
concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the world seemed to be
permeated by the Divine life, and was regarded as the flowing out of
this most perfect life through certain channels, until it returns, in a
necessary circle, back to itself."[836]

[Footnote 834: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii.
ch. lxviii., lxix.]

[Footnote 835: Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. lxx.]

[Footnote 836: Schwegler's "History of Philosophy," p. 141.]

The God of the Stoics is not, however, a mere principle of life
vitalizing nature, but an _intelligent_ principle directing nature; and,
above all, a _moral_ principle, governing the human race. "God is a
living being, immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his
happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil; having a foreknowledge of
the world, and of a