TRANSCENDENTAL THEISM OF THE STOA 23 



he was making a retrogressive step. The scientific 

 heritage of Heracleitus passed into the hands neither 

 of Plato nor of Aristotle, but into those of Democritus. 

 But the world was not yet ready to receive the 

 great conceptions of the philosopher of Abdera. It 

 was reserved for the Stoics to return to the track 

 marked out by the earlier philosophers ; and, pro- 

 fessing themselves disciples of Heracleitus, to 

 develope the idea of evolution systematically. In 

 doing this, they not only omitted some charac- 

 teristic features of their master's teaching, but they 

 made additions altogether foreign to it. One of 

 the most influential of these importations was the 

 transcendental theism which had come into vogue. 

 The restless, fiery energy, operating according to law, 

 out of which all things emerge and into which they 

 return, in the endless successive cycles of the great 

 year ; which creates and destroys worlds as a wanton 

 child builds up, and anon levels, sand castles on the 

 seashore ; was metamorphosed into a material world- 

 soul and decked out with all the attributes of ideal 

 Divinity ; not merely with infinite power and trans- 

 cendent wisdom, but with absolute goodness. 



The consequences of this step were momentous. 

 For if the cosmos is the effect of an immanent > 

 omnipotent and infinitely beneficent cause, the ex- 

 istence in it of real evil, still less of necessarily 

 inherent evil, is plainly inadmissible. ( 1S ) Yet the 

 universal experience of mankind testified then, as 

 now, that, whether we look within us or without 

 us, evil stares us in the face on all sides ; that if 



. 



