The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laërtius (first ebook reader .TXT) 📖

and regulated according to intellect and providence, as Chrysippus says in his works on Providence, and Posidonius in the thirteenth book of his treatise on Gods, since mind penetrates into every part of the world, just as the soul pervades us; but it is in a greater degree in some parts, and in a less degree in others. For instance, it penetrates as a habit, as for instance, into the bones and sinews; and into some it penetrates as the mind does, for instance, into the dominant principle. And thus the whole world, being a living thing, endowed with a soul and with reason, has the aether as its dominant principle, as Antipater of Tyre says in the eighth book of his treatise on the World. But Chrysippus in the first book of his essay on Providence, and Posidonius in his treatise on Gods, say that the heaven is the dominant principle of the world; and Cleanthes attributes this to the sun. Chrysippus however on this point contradicts himself; for he says in another place that the most subtle portion of the aether, which is also called by the Stoics the first God, is what is infused in a sensible manner into all the beings which are in the air, and through every animal and every plant, and through the earth itself according to a certain habit; and that it is this which communicates to them the faculty of feeling.

They say too, that the world is one and also finite, having a spherical form. For that such a shape is the most convenient for motion, as Posidonius says, in the fifteenth book of his Discussions on Natural Philosophy, and so says Antipater also in his essay on the World. And on the outside there is diffused around it a boundless vacuum, which is incorporeal. And it is incorporeal inasmuch as it is capable of being contained by bodies, but is not so. And that there is no such thing as a vacuum in the world, but that it is all closely united and compact; for that this condition is necessarily brought about by the concord and harmony which exist between the heavenly bodies and those of the earth. And Chrysippus mentions a vacuum in his essay on a Vacuum, and also in the first book of his treatise on the Physical Arts, and so does Apollophanes in his Natural Philosophy, and so does Apollodorus, and so does Posidonius in the second book of his discourses on Natural Philosophy. And they say that these things are all incorporeal and all alike. Moreover, that time is incorporeal, since it is an interval of the motion of the world. And that of time, the past and the future are both illimitable, but the present is limited. And they assert that the world is perishable, inasmuch as it was produced by reason, and is one of the things which are perceptible by the senses; and whatever has its parts perishable, must also be perishable in the whole. And the parts of the world are perishable, for they change into one another. Therefore, the whole world is perishable. And again, if anything admits of a change for the worse it is perishable; therefore, the world is perishable, for it can be dried up, and it can be covered with water.

Now the world was created when its substance was changed from fire to moisture, by the action of the air; and then its denser parts coagulated, and so the earth was made, and the thinner portions were evaporated and became air; and this being rarefied more and more, produced fire. And then, by the combination of all these elements, were produced plants and animals, and other kinds of things. Now Zeno speaks of the creation and of the destruction of the world, in his treatise on the Universe, and so does Cleanthes, and so does Antipater in the tenth book of his treatise on the World. But Panaetius asserts that the world is imperishable.

Again, that the world is an animal, and that it is endued with reason, and life, and intellect, is affirmed by Chrysippus in the first volume of his treatise on Providence, and by Apollodorus in his Natural Philosophy, and by Posidonius; and that it is an animal in this sense, as being an essence endued with life, and with sensation. For that which is an animal is better than that which is not an animal. But nothing is better than the world; therefore the world is an animal. And it is endued with life, as is plain from the fact of our own soul being as it were a fragment broken off from it. But Boethus denies that the world is an animal.

Again, that the world is one is affirmed by Zeno in his treatise on the Universe, and by Chrysippus, and by Apollodorus in his Natural Philosophy, and by Posidonius in the first book of his Discourses on Natural Philosophy. And by the term “the universe,” according to Apollodorus, is understood both the world itself, and also the whole of the world itself and of the exterior vacuum taken together. The world, then, is finite, and the vacuum infinite.

Of the stars, those which are fixed are only moved in connection with the movements of the entire heaven; but the planets move according to their own peculiar and separate motions. And the sun takes an oblique path through the circle of the zodiac, and in the same manner also does the moon, which is of a winding form. And the sun is pure fire, as Posidonius asserts in the seventh book of his treatise on the Heavenly Bodies, and it is larger than the earth, as the same author informs us in the sixteenth book of his Disclosures on Natural Philosophy. Also it is spherical, as he says in another place, being made on the same principle as the world is. Therefore it is fire, because it