Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

i ORIGINS OF STOICISM xix
' 1
air fire, and so conversely by return along *
the down-
ward path.' This 'plastic fire' operates in man as a
kindling movement of inherent life, an inhaling and
exhaling heat or breath or spirit, which at once conducts
and reveals the processes of life ; and on the larger scale
of the universe it is the quickening cosmic flow which
constitutes a world-order out of the consumption and
replenishment of interchanging opposites moist and
dry, soft and hard, dark and light, hot and cold. As
an inner life or reason of phenomena, as supplying the
power and determining the mode of their expression, as
the instrument of rectification or balance between con-
tending opposites, as the unseen operative and directive
power, it may be spoken of as Reason or Justice or
Destiny or God. Thus in their inmost being 'gods
and men are one.'
In language of this kind scientific intuition outran the
power and even the desire of exact analysis. Grappling
with a new and complex order of truths, as fascinating
as they were baffling to scientific apprehension, Hera-
clitus found in metaphor and figure the fittest expres-
sion for ideas which eluded experimental or observational
proof. His genius for analogy and aphorism, and in
particular his predilection for moralising physical pro-
cesses so natural to early speculation, extricating itself
from mythological modes of thought anticipated later
conceptions of philosophy, and oracular ambiguity of
form gave to his dicta a compass and a pregnancy
which captivated and inspired the imagination of suc-
cessors his forecasts seemed a ; divination, and '
the
1 iv. 46.