Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

i ORIGINS OF STOICISM xxiii
phenomena, it could not satisfy
Being, which thought required
that ultimate idea of
as the antecedent and
necessary presupposition of phenomenal appearances ;
true Being, on the showing of the Eleatics, must be one,
eternal, homogeneous. How was it possible to combine
the idea of this unchangeable and self-existent One
with the plurality, the transience, and the qualitative
variety of phenomenal
existences? If both views ex-
pressed a truth, there must be some unchangeable substratum
manifesting itself in and through the diversities
of individual things.
The Atomists attempted to supply an answer, approach-
ing the question from the purely material side. First,
Empedocles broached the doctrine of the four elements
earth, water, air, and fire, somewhat arbitrarily singling
out these four substances, subject to modifications of
density and intermixture for which mere motion might
sufficiently account, as the indestructible homogeneous
elements of all phenomenal things. This doctrine of
four elements, in so far as it expresses four states of
matter, solid, liquid, gaseous, and igneous, merited
the acceptance which it found from all the schools,
and is freely adopted for purposes of classification by
the Stoics. 1 But the system of Empedocles, though
containing popular and plausible elements, lacked philosophical
consistency. The selection of four elements
was arbitrary and superficial, and as an enumeration of
primary forms was as provisional as the seventy odd
elements of modern Chemistry ;
it gave no account of
the ultimate constitution and significance of matter, and
1
E.g. iv. 4 ; ix. 9 ; x. 7.