258 REV. H. J. CLARKE. 
substance which has no attributes whatever, something for 
which, whether we look below, within, or above ourselves, 
boundless possibilities can find no place. 
Such, however, is the strictly logical representation of a 
hypothesis which obtained a secure and a very conspicuous 
position in that species of theistic philosophy which compre- 
hends in an eternal duality the antithetical principles, Mind 
and Matter. The object I have in view requires that I should 
direct attention to this hypothesis only in so far as its asso- 
ciation with the word Logos may help us to determine the 
philosophic import of the latter. Of all the schools of thought 
which arose under the spreading influence of outgrowths from 
Socratic teaching, or in which older philosophies, Socratically 
modified, made their appearance, the most pronounced in its 
ostensible repudiation of pure materialism is that which was 
founded by Zeno, of Citium, whose disciples, from the fact 
that they recalled to the public mind the porch in which he 
used to lecture, came to be known as Stoics. Unlike his 
earlier namesake, Zeno, of Hlea, he seems to have had a pro- 
foundly earnest, practical aim, and, as was natural, the 
philosophy which took its rise from his teaching shaped itself 
into a rigidly-exacting ethical system. It was, i one point 
of view, antipodal to materialism; for its dominant ethical 
principle was contemptuous indifference to the conditions to 
which the experiences and operations of the spiritual element 
in man are subjected by its sensible environment. Man, as 
connatural with that Being who pervades and governs all 
things, was assumed to have within himself a sufficiency that 
may be found in acquiescent submission to the laws which 
his reason, duly exercised, acknowledges, and in apathetic 
inattention to all solicitations of opposing appetite, and all 
counsels of dissuasive fear. Now, I venture to think we shall 
be doing no injustice to the virtues of such Stoics as Epictetus 
if we take for granted, as assuredly we must, that the sort of 
apathy affected by the members of this school was, in its 
relation to life’s busy cares and pleasures, a flattering ideal, 
much more largely productive of elevated moral precepts and 
choice aphorisms, and a transparently self-conscious dignity of 
deportment, than of “ truth in the inward parts,” or even of 
veritable illustrations of sublime indifference to surroundings. 
But what it immediately concerns me to remark is this, that 
a philosophy which referred the weary seeker after inward rest 
and peace to resources assumed to be discoverable in himself, 
and which thus, to all practical intents and purposes, assured 
him that he was potentially a god, allowed no place whatever 
for a worthy conception of the Almighty and Hternal Being. 
