If this be fairly done, it will appear that the agency of Deity is, according to the Stoics, nothing more than the active motion of a celestial ether, or fire, possessed of intelligence, which at first gave form to the shapeless mass of gross matter, and being always essentially united to the visible world by the same necessary agency, preserves its order and harmony. The Stoic idea of Providence is, not that of a being, wholly independent of matter, freely directing and governing all things, but that of a necessary chain of causes and effects, arising from the action of a power, which is itself a part of the existence which it regulates, and which equally with that existence is subject to the immutable law of necessity. Providence, in the Stoic creed, is only another name for absolute necessity, or fate, to which God and matter, or the universe, which consists of both, is immutably subject. The rational, efficient, and active principle in nature, the Stoics called by various names: Nature, fate, Jupiter, God. "What is nature," says Seneca, "but God; the divine reason, inherent in the whole universe, and in all its parts? or you may call him, if you please, the author of all things." And again: "Whatever appellations imply celestial power and energy, may be justly applied to God; his names may properly be as numerous as his offices," The term nature, when it is at all distinguished in the Stoic system from God, denotes not a separate agent, but that order of things which is necessarily produced by his perpetual agency. Since the active principle of nature is comprehended within the world, and with matter makes one whole, it necessarily follows that God penetrates, pervades, and animates matter, and the things which are formed from it; or, in other words, that he is the soul of the universe. The universe is, according to Zeno and his followers, "a sentient and animated being." Nor was this a new tenet, but, in some sort, the doctrine of all antiquity. Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and after these, Zeno, taking it for granted that there is no real existence which is not corporeal, conceived nature to be one whole, consisting of a subtle ether and gross matter, the former the active, the latter the passive principle, as essentially united as the soul and body of man that is, they supposed God, with respect to nature, to be, not a co-existing, but an informing principle.