The gods, like men, were, in the Stoical conception, bound by the conditions of things.

"That which is best of all things and supreme," says Epictetus, "have the gods placed in our power-the faculty of rightly dealing with ideas: all other things are out of our power. Is it that they would not? I for my part think that if they had been able they would have placed the other things also in our power; but they absolutely could not. . . . For what says Zeus? 'Epictetus, if it had been possible, I would have made thy body and thy possessions free and unhindered. But as it is, forget not that thy body is not thine, but only clay deftly kneaded. And since I could not do this, I gave thee a part of myself, the power of making or not making effort, the power of indulging or not indulging desire; in short, the power of dealing with all the ideas of thy mind."1

2. Side by side with this conception of destiny were growing up new conceptions of the nature of the gods. The gods of wrath were passing away. The awe of the forces of nature, of night and thunder, of the whirlwind and the earthquake, which had underlain the primitive religions, was fading into mist. The meaner conceptions which had resulted from a vividly realized anthropomorphism, the malice and spite and intrigue which make some parts of the earlier mythology read like the chronique scandaleuse of a European court, were passing into the region of ridicule and finding their expression only in burlesque. Two great conceptions, the elements of which had existed in the earliest religion, gradually asserted their supremacy. The gods were just, and they were also good. They punished wicked deeds, not by an arbitrary vengeance, but by the operation of unfailing laws.

1 Epict. Diss. 1. 1. 10; cf. Seneca, de Provid. 5, 7, 'non potest artifex mutare materiam.' But Epictetus sometimes makes it a ques tion, not of possibility, but of will, e.g. Diss. 4. 3. 10.

The laws were the expression of the highest conceivable morality. Their penalties were personal to the offender, and the sinner who did not pay them in this life paid them after death. The gods were also good. The idea of their kindness, which in the earlier religion had been a kindness only for favoured individuals, widened out to a conception of their general benevolence. The conception of their forethought, which at first had only been that of wise provision in particular cases, linked itself with the Stoical teleology.2 The God who was the Reason of the world, and immanent in it, was working to an end. That end was the perfection of the whole, which was also the perfection of each member of the whole. In the sphere of human life, happiness and perfection, misery and imperfection, are linked together. The forethought or "Providence" of God was thus beneficent in regard both to the universe itself and to the individual. It

worked by self-acting laws. "There are," says Epictetus, "punishments appointed as it were by law to those who disobey the divine administration. Whoever thinks anything to be good that is outside the range of his will, let that man feel envy and unsatisfied longing; let him be flattered, let him be unquiet; whoever thinks anything to be evil that is outside the range of his will, let him feel pain and sorrow, let him bemoan himself and be unhappy." And again: "This is the law-divine

1 The data for the long history of the moral conceptions of Greek religion which are briefly indicated above are far too numerous to be given in a note: the student is referred to Nägelsbach, Die Nachhomerische Theologie, i. 17-58. One may note the list of titles applied to God, e.g. in Dio Chrysostom, and the diminishing use of iλáσкeσOαL 2 Epict. Diss. 1. 6. 3 Diss. 3. 11. 1.

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 Destiny 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), ovσíav eiμappévns λόγον τὸν διὰ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ παντὸς διήκοντα: Chrysippus, ibid. εἱμαρμένη ἐστὶν ὁ τοῦ κόσμου λόγος ἢ λόγος τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ προνοία 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

yívetaι Tà dè yevnoóμeva yevýoetai : Zeno ap. Ar. Did. Epit. phys. 20, in Stob. Ecl. 1. 11. 5 (Diels, p. 458), TÒY TOU TAYtos Xóyor ôr évot ἑιμαρμένην 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, ὅτι δ' ἡ κοινὴ φύσις καὶ ὁ κοινὸς 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' εἱμαρτ μένην 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.1 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), Deŵ yàp тŵ navnycμóvɩ 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.