=The Conception of Nature.= In comparison with the Epicurean the position of the Stoic was peculiarly involved. The ideal imperturbability of the Epicurean was simple in so far that it required nothing beyond itself. It was an individual matter and varied with the individual. But the Stoic ideal personality is based upon the reason, that is eternally one and the same. What is this absolute principle that gives to the human reason its absoluteness? What is the extent of the law of the reason that the human reason itself implies? Thus the Stoic needed to supplement his conception of personality and the Epicurean did not. Because his individualism was more rigorous, it needed the more to be supported. The Stoic principle of morality had to have its foundation in the absolute nature of things. This foundation could not be the politico-moral principle of Greek national life, for that existed no longer. It could not be a transcendent, supersensuous, or incorporeal principle, for his Cynic inheritance would forbid his looking beyond experience. The supplementary absolute principle of the Stoics must be an immanent principle, a living power in the world. A pantheistic conception of Nature took its place side by side with the Stoic conception of personality, and this conception of Nature became the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. For this the Stoics adopted the Logos doctrine of Heracleitus, which will be recalled as the doctrine of primal matter as rational, just, and fateful changingness. The Stoics were reinforced in this by Aristotle’s teleological philosophy of nature. Yet they tried to overcome the dualism of matter and Form as it existed in Aristotle’s teaching, and one feels that the Stoic pantheism was a conscious and avowed pantheism. The Stoic conception of Nature is that of a unitary, rational, and living whole, having no parts, but only determinate forms. Yet it cannot be called a hylozoism, like the doctrine of Heracleitus, for there Form and matter had not been distinguished. In the intervening years Form and matter had been separated, and the Stoic sought to put them together again. In comparison with the doctrine of the Old Schools, the Stoic teaching was (1) monistic, as against their dualism, (2) materialistic, as against their idealism, but (3) like them, it was teleological.