lay one among the marked points of contrast between Stoics and Epicureans.) They held this foreordination even to the length of fatalism, and made the same replies, as have been given in modern times, to the difficulty of reconciling it with the existence of evil, and with the apparent condition of the better and the worse individuals among mankind.  They offered explanations such as the following:  (1) God is the author of all things except wickedness; (2) the very nature of good supposes its contrast evil, and the two are inseparable, like light and dark, (which may be called the argument from Relativity); (3) in the enormous extent of the Universe, some things must be neglected; (4) when evil happens to the good, it is not as a punishment, but as connected with a different dispensation; (5) parts of the world may be presided over by evil demons; (6) what we call evil may not be evil.

Like most other ancient schools, the Stoics held God to be corporeal like man:—­Body is the only substance; nothing incorporeal could act on what is corporeal; the First Cause of all, God or Zeus, is the primeval fire, emanating from which is the soul of man in the form of a warm ether.

It is for human beings to recognize the Universe as governed by universal Law, and not only to raise their minds to the comprehension of it, but to enter into the views of the administering Zeus or Fate, who must regard all interests equally; we are to be, as it were, in harmony with him, to merge self in universal Order, to think only of that and its welfare.  As two is greater than one, the interests of the whole world are infinitely greater than the interests of any single being, and no one should be satisfied with a regard to anything less than the whole.  By this elevation of view, we are necessarily raised far above the consideration of the petty events befalling ourselves.  The grand effort of human reason is thus to rise to the abstraction or totality of entire Nature; ‘no ethical subject,’ says Chrysippus, ’could be rightly approached except from the pre-consideration of entire Nature, and the ordering of the whole.’

As to Immortality, the Stoics precluded themselves, by holding the theory of the absorption of the individual soul at death into the divine essence; but, on the other hand, their doctrine of advance and aspiration is what has in all times been the main natural argument for the immortality of the soul.  For the most part, they kept themselves undecided as to this doctrine, giving it as an alternative, reasoning as to our conduct on either supposition, and submitting to the pleasure of God in this as in all other things.

In arguing for the existence of Divine power and government, they employed what has been called the argument from Design, which is as old as Sokrates.  Man is conscious that he is in himself an intellectual or spiritual power, from which, by analogy, he is led to believe that a greater power pervades the universe, as intellect pervades the human system.