Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.439without qualities, while the active element whichruns through and quickens everything is God inmatter. In real truth God and matter are onething:, 7 or, / in other words, ' the stoic doctrine is apantheism which views matter as instinct withlife.17 God is the unity of that force which embracesand interpenetrates the universe, assumimns, and as such " is a subtle fluid, fire, ether,or breath, / in which are contained all forms of ex-istence belonging to the world-body which it animates,and from which they develop themselvesin order: it lives and moves in all, and is thecommon source of all effect and all desire. God,then, is the world-soul, and the world itself no-aggregate of independent elements, but a being,organised, living, filled and animated by a singlesoul, that is to say, by one original fire manifestingitself in various degrees of tension and heat. Ifin Aristotle's theoryJthe world is a total of singlecbeings, which are only bound together unto ahigher aim by a community of effort, in the stoicsystem on the contrary these beings all viewedtogether are members of a surpassingly perfectorganisation, ^ li4U..*-«.RJUU L/JU \fcXJLA4 and UVdLX V/L as such, _J lyL \*J iJ. " so bound in one. thatnothing can happen to the individual being, whichdoes not by sympathy extend its operation to allothers. Thus on his physical side, God is theworld-fire, the vital all-interpenetrating heat, thesole cause of all life and motion, and the necessity17 The doctrine of Hylozoismus,