MEANING AND HISTORY OF THE LOGOS OF PHILOSOPHY. 25] 
consistently with a theory which presupposes an original 
tendency to condensation,—these are questions with which, 
apparently, he did not see his way to deal.* But respecting 
the transformation, considered as a fact, he entertains no 
doubt; and, indeed, he takes for granted that even those 
substances which yield no sensible evidence of an igneous 
nature are not only of igneous origin, but reducible to their 
original form. Hach has its equivalent in the igneous element, 
its price, so to speak, just as goods may be exchanged for 
gold and gold for goods.+ Thus, putting sensible manifesta- 
tion out of view, and limiting his conception to a certain 
constitutive principle, operative in all things and imperishable, 
he applies to the Fire the epithet ever-living. The sensible 
flame, it is true, at one time flashes up, at another dies down; 
and this, we must of course presume, is what he means when 
he represents the Fire as both kindling and extinguishing 
itself. Accordingly, in these phenomenal changes he sees no 
fluctuations of energy in the fundamental element, but, on 
the contrary, illustrations of punctual conformity to settled 
laws: in every igneous flow and ebb, as it appears to him, 
strict measure is observed.{ | 
Further, he makes it evident that he imagines the material 
whence the Cosmos derives its existence to be not only an 
essence of extreme tenuity, but even of a psychic nature. This, 
in fact, he plainly teaches, terming the First principle ‘the 
Evaporation,” and at the same time identifying it with Soul,§ 
a representation which implies that, in evolving psychic life 
it exhales its pure substance into material more remotely 
derived from its original self, and in which its proper attributes 
come into association with such as are comparatively ignoble. 
Such, apparently, is the force of the word evaporation, as 
Heracleitus used it. We may be sure it was not suggested by 
a belief that aqweous vapour was present in the original igneous 
and gaseous element; for he expressly taught that water is the 
death of the soul,|| and that the absence of. moisture is indis- 
pensable to psychical perfection, and its excess, as in intoxica- 
* He simply imagines a way downwards (odb¢ xarw) and a way upwards 
(600¢ dyw). Diog. Laert., ix. 8. 
+ Plutarch, De Ei apud Delphos, 8. 
~ Clem. Alex., Stromat., v. 599: “zip deiZwov, amrépevoy péirpa 
cai amooBevvipevoy péTpa,’” 
§ Aristot., De Anim., i. 2,19: “riy dpyhy civai dnor uy, tixep THY 
avabupiacy, & ye Tada ovviornow* Kai dowparov TE Kai peo dei.” 
| Philo, De Incorrupt. Mund., 21. 
