SENECA. THE STOICS. 255 



followers of Zeno have been long handed down in history, as the 

 philosophers of Tlie Porch. The regularity of Zeno's life, as well as 

 the severity of his doctrines, and the keenness of his logic, ensured to 

 him the respect and admiration of the Athenians. The keys of the 

 city were delivered into his custody. A golden crown was presented 

 to him, and a statue of brass raised to his honour. Antigonus 

 Gonatas, the king of Macedon, whenever he visited Athens, attended 

 his lectures, and was anxious to prevail on him to come to the 

 Macedonian court. Zeno's fame seems to have continued increasing 

 to the end of his life, and in his latter days excited the jealousy, or at 

 least incurred the reprehension, of Epicurus He died at the age of 

 ninety-eight, after having presided many years in the Porch. He was 

 tall in stature, thin in person, abstemious, with a countenance somewhat 

 repulsive and scowling. He wrote a work on the Commonweal, in 

 which he animadverted on the errors of Plato with much acrimony. 

 Of this work nothing remains, except some few passages incidentally 

 cited by ancient authors. 



The Stoics considered the present system of the world as wrought His doctrines 

 out of an original chaos ; but they distinguished between the rude 

 materials and the vivifying principle. From the materials they held 

 that the different elements were produced by the operation of that 

 mighty and pervading principle, which existed prior to their pro- 

 duction, and which will survive their decay. The Stoical masters system of 

 differed in their account of the process by which the elements were the world - 

 divided from one another. Zeno seems to have considered that the 

 earth was separated by its own gravity and adhesion ; that the water 

 consisted of such fluid particles as were not solid enough so as to 

 conglomerate into earth, and yet were of too settled a nature to 

 evaporate altogether into air ; that the air itself was produced by 

 exhalation; and that fire was produced from the air by flashes or 

 coruscations. 



Zeno seems to have had a tolerably distinct notion of the universality centripetal 

 of a centripetal force. He maintained that all things which exist by force - 

 themselves are moved towards the middle of the whole, and likewise 

 of the world itself, and that there is the same cause of the rest of the 

 world in infinite space, and of the rest of the earth in the world, in 

 the midst of which it is constituted as a point. It is true that Zeno 

 stated that heavy bodies are principally influenced by this propensity, 

 but he at the same time insisted that the lighter elements, as air and 

 fire, did in some respect tend towards the centre of the world. 



As the Stoics considered water to be, in one sense, the basis of all phenomena 

 the elements, and fire itself to be produced from water after having of Nature, 

 been previously refined into air, it is not surprising that they defined the 

 sun to be a self-guiding or intelligent mass of fire, gathered and 

 kindled originally and still constantly nourished by exhalations from 

 the great ocean ; and that they deemed the moon to be nourished in 

 the like manner from the exhalations of fresh water. Thev traced 



