of conscious reason
was found in the world was part of the divine reason.

Though in this scheme of things there was in the abstract plenty of room
for the gods of popular belief, nevertheless the Stoics did not in reality
acknowledge them. In principle their standpoint was the same as
Aristotle's. They supposed the heavenly bodies to be divine, but all the
rest, namely, the anthropomorphic gods, were nothing to them.

In their explanation of the origin of the gods they went beyond Aristotle,
but their doctrine was not always the same on this point. The earlier
Stoics regarded mythology and all theology as human inventions, but not
arbitrary inventions. Mythology, they thought, should be understood
allegorically; it was the naive expression partly of a correct conception
of Nature, partly of ethical and metaphysical truths. Strictly speaking,
men had always been Stoics, though in an imperfect way. This point of view
was elaborated in detail by the first Stoics, who took their stand partly
on the earlier naturalism which had already broken the ground in this
direction, and partly on sophistic, so that they even brought into vogue
again the theory of Prodicus, that the gods were a hypostasis of the
benefits of civilisation. Such a standpoint could not of course be
maintained without arbitrariness and absurdities which exposed it to
embarrassing criticism. This seems to have been the reason why the later
Stoics, and especially Poseidonius, took another road. They adopted the
doctrine of Xenocrates with regard to demons and developed it in fantastic
forms. The earlier method was not, however, given up, and at the time of
Cicero we find both views represented in the doctrine of the school.

Such is the appearance of the theory. In both its forms it is evidently an
attempt to meet popular belief half-way from a standpoint which is really
beyond it. This tendency is seen even more plainly in the practice of the
Stoics. They recognised public worship and insisted on its advantages; in
their moral reflections they employed the gods as ideals in the Socratic
manner, regardless of the fact that in their theory they did not really
allow for gods who were ideal men; nay, they even went the length of
giving to their philosophical deity, the "universal reason," the name of
Zeus by preference, though it had nothing but the name in common with the
Olympian ruler of gods and men. This pervading ambiguity brought much
well-deserved repro