and strong and beyond escape-which exacts the greatest punishments from those who have sinned the greatest sins. For what says it? The man who lays claim to the things that do not concern him, let him be a braggart, let him be vainglorious: the man who disobeys the divine administration, let him be mean-spirited, let him be a slave, let him feel grief, and jealousy, and pity; in short, let him bemoan himself and be unhappy."1

There were thus at the beginning of the Christian era two concurrent conceptions of the nature of the superhuman forces which determine the existence and control the activity of all created things, the conceptions of Destiny and of Providence. The two conceptions, though apparently antagonistic, had tended, like all conceptions which have a strong hold upon masses of men, to approach each other. The meeting-point had been found in the conception of the fixed order of the world as being at once rational and beneficent. It was rational because it was the embodiment of the highest reason; and it was beneficent because happiness is incident to perfection, and the highest reason, which is the law of the perfection of the whole, is also the law of the perfection of the parts. There were two stages in this blending of the two conceptions into one, the identification, first of Des tiny with Reason;2 and, secondly, of Destiny or Reason

1 Diss. 3. 24. 42, 43.

2 Destiny is Reason: Heraclitus ap. Aet. Placit. in Plut. de placit. philos. 1. 28. 1; Stob. Ecl. 1. 5. 15 (Diels, p. 323), ovoíav eiμapμévns λόγον τὸν διὰ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ παντὸς διήκοντα: Chrysippus, ibid. εἱμαρμένη ἐστὶν ὁ τοῦ κόσμου λόγος ἢ λόγος τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ προνοίᾳ διοικουμένων ἢ λόγος καθ ̓ ὃν τὰ μὲν γεγονότα γέγονε τὰ δὲ γινόμενα

with Providence.1

The former of these is found in Heraclitus, but is absent from Plato, who distinguishes what comes into being by necessity, from what is wrought by mind: the elaboration of both the former and the latter is due to the Stoics, growing logically out of their conception of the universe as a single substance moved by an inherent law. It was probably in many cases a change rather of language than of idea when Destiny or Reason or Providence was spoken of as God;2 and yet sometimes, whether by the lingering of an ancient belief or by an intuition which transcended logic, the sense of personality mingles with the idea of physical sequence, and all things that happen in the infinite chain of immu

yíveτaι Tà de yevnσóμeva yevýσerai: Zeno ap. Ar. Did. Epit. phys. 20, in Stob. Eel. 1. 11. 5 (Diels, p. 458), τὸν τοῦ παντὸς λόγον ὃν ἔνιοι Ειμαρμένην καλοῦσιν.

1 Destiny, or Reason, is Providence: Chrysippus, in the quotation given in the preceding note: Zeno ap. Aet. Placit. in Stob. Ecl. 1. 5. 15 (Diels, p. 322).

2 Destiny, Reason, Providence, is God, or the Will of God: Chrysippus in Plut. de Stoic. repug. 34. 5, öti 8 ý kolỳ þúσis kaì ó koivòs τῆς φύσεως λόγος εἱμαρμένη καὶ πρόνοια καὶ Ζεύς ἐστιν οὐδὲ τοὺς ἀντίποδας λέληθε πανταχοῦ γὰρ ταῦτα θρυλεῖται ὑπ ̓ αὐτῶν· καὶ Διὸς δ ̓ ἐτελείετο βουλὴ τὸν Ὅμηρον εἰρηκέναι φησὶν [sc. ὁ Χρύσιππος] ὀρθῶς ἐπὶ τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἀναφέροντα καὶ τὴν τῶν ὅλων φύσιν καθ ̓ ἣν πάντα διοικεῖται: id. de commun. not. 34. 5, οὐδὲ τοὐλάχιστόν ἐστι τῶν μερῶν ἔχειν ἄλλως ἀλλ ̓ ἢ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Διὸς βούλησιν: Arius Didymus, Epit. ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. 15. 15 (Diels, p. 464): Philodemus, de piet. frag. ed. Gompertz, p. 83 (Diels, p. 549). The more exact statement is in the summary of Aetius ap. Plut. de placit. philos. 1. 7. 17, Stob. Ecl. 1. 2. 29 (Diels, p. 306), where God is said to comprehend within Himself τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους καθ ̓ οὓς ἅπαντα καθ ̓ εἱμαρμένην γίνεται. The loftiest form of the conception is expressed by Lucan, Pharsal. 2. 10, 'se quoque lege tenens:' God is not the slave of Fate or Law, but voluntarily binds Himself by it.

table causation are conceived as happening by the will of God.

3. But over against the conception of a perfect Reason or Providence administering the world, was the fact of the existence of physical pain and social inequality and moral failure. The problems which the fact suggested filled a large place in later Greek philosophy, and were solved in many ways.

The solution was sometimes found in the denial of the universality of Providence. God is the Author only of good evil is due to other causes. This view, which found its first philosophical expression in the Timæus of Plato, was transmitted, through some of the Platonic schools, to the later syncretist writers who incorporated Platonic elements. In its Platonic form it assumed the existence of inferior agents who ultimately owed their existence to God, but whose existence as authors of evil He permitted or overlooked. In some later forms the view linked itself with Oriental conceptions of matter as inherently evil.

The solution was more commonly found in a denial

1 Plat. Rep. 2, pp. 379, 380; Tim. p. 41. Philo, de mund. opif. 24 (i. 17), de confus. ling. 35 (i. 432), Deŷ yàp tậ пavnɣeμóvɩ éμπpeñès οὐκ ἔδοξεν εἶναι τὴν ἐπὶ κακίαν ὁδὸν ἐν ψυχῇ λογικῇ δι ̓ ἑαυτοῦ δημιουργῆσαι· οὗ χάριν τοῖς μετ ̓ αὐτὸν ἐπέτρεψε τὴν τούτου τοῦ μέρους καταστ κευήν : de profug. 13 (i. 556), ἀναγκαῖον οὖν ἡγήσατο τὴν κακῶν γένεσιν ἑτέροις ἀπονεῖμαι δημιουργοῖς τὴν δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἑαυτῷ μόνῳ: so also in the (probably) post-Philonean de Abraham. 28 (ii. 22). The other phase of the conception is stated by Celsus, not as a philosophical solution of the difficulty, but as one which might be taught to the vulgar, ἐξαρκεῖ δὲ εἰς πλῆθος εἰρῆσθαι ὡς ἐκ θεοῦ μὲν οὐκ ἔστι κακὰ ὕλῃ δὲ πρόσκειται.

of the reality of apparent evils. They were all either forms of good, or incidental to its operation or essential to its production. This was the common solution of the Stoics. It had many phases. One view was based upon the teleological conception of nature. The world is marching on to its end it realizes its purpose not directly but by degrees: there are necessary sequences of its march which seem to us to be evil.1 Another view, akin to the preceding, was based upon the conception of the world as a whole. In its vast economy there are subordinations and individual inconveniences. Such subordinations and inconveniences are necessary parts of the plan. The pain of the individual is not an evil, but his contri

bution to the good of the whole. "What about my leg being lamed, then ?" says Epictetus,2 addressing himself in the character of an imaginary objector. "Slave! do you really find fault with the world on account of one bit of a leg? will you not give that up to the universe? will you not let it go? will you not gladly surrender it to the Giver?" The world, in other words, was regarded as an economy (oikovouía), like that of a city, in which there are apparent inequalities of condition, but in which

1 This is one of the solutions offered by Chrysippus: the concrete form of the difficulty, with which he dealt, was εἰ αἱ τῶν ἀνθρώπων νόσοι κατὰ φύσιν γίνονται, and his answer was that diseases come κατὰ παρakoλovonov, 'non per naturam sed per sequellas quasdam necessarias,' Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 1. 9. So also in the long fragment of Philo in Euseb. Prep. Ευ. 8. 13 (Philo, ii. 643, 644), θεὸς γὰρ οὐδενὸς αἴτιος κακοῦ τὸ παράπαν ἀλλ ̓ αἱ τῶν στοιχείων μεταβολαὶ ταῦτα γεννῶσιν, οὐ προηγού μενα ἔργα φύσεως ἀλλ ̓ ἑπόμενα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις καὶ τοῖς προηγουμένοις ἐπακολουθοῦντα.

2 Diss. 1. 12. 24.

such inequalities are necessary to the constitution of the whole.1

"What is meant, then," asks Epictetus, "by distinguishing the things that happen to us as 'according to nature' and 'contrary to nature'? The phrases are used as if we were isolated. For example, to a foot to be according to nature' is to be clean; but if you consider it as a foot, a member of the body, and not as isolated, it will be its duty both to walk in mud, and to tread on thorns-nay, sometimes even to be cut off for the benefit of the whole body; if it refuse, it is no longer a foot. We have to form a similar conception about ourselves. What are you? A man. If you regard yourself as isolated, it is according to nature' to live until old age, to be rich, to be in good health; but if you regard yourself as a man, a part of a certain whole, it is your duty, on account of that whole, sometimes to be ill, sometimes to take a voyage, sometimes to run into danger, sometimes to be in want, and, it may be, to die before your time. Why then are you discontented? Do you not know that as in the example a discontented foot is no longer a foot, so neither are you a man. For what is a man? A member of a city, first the city which consists of gods and men, and next of the city which is so called in the more proximate sense, the earthly city, which is a small model of the whole. 'Am I, then, now,' you say, 'to be brought before a court is so-and-so to fall into a fever: so-and-so to go on a voyage: so-and-so to die so-and-so to be condemned?' Yes; for it is impossible, considering the sort of body we have, with this atmosphere round us, and with these companions of our life, that different things of this kind should not befall different men.2

:

"It is on this account that the philosophers rightly tell us that if a perfectly good man had foreknown what was going to happen to him, he would co-operate with nature in both falling

1 Chrysippus, de Diis, 2, ap. Plut. de Stoic. repug. 35, totè μèv tà δύσχρηστα συμβαίνει τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς οὐχ ὥσπερ τοῖς φαύλοις κολάσεως χάριν ἀλλὰ κατ ̓ ἄλλην οἰκονομίαν ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν.

2 Diss. 2. 5. 24.