But bitterness and epigram could not heal; and for healing and inward peace men longed more and more,[11] as they felt their own weakness, the power of evil and the terror of life; and they found both in a philosophy that had originally come into being under circumstances somewhat similar. They needed some foundation for life, some means of linking the individual to something that could not be shaken, and this they found in Stoicism. The Stoic philosopher saw a unity in this world of confusion--it was the "Generative Reason"--the _spermatikos logos_, the Divine Word, or Reason, that is the seed and vital principle, whence all things come and in virtue of which they {38} live. All things came from fiery breath, _pneuma diapuron_, and returned to it. The whole universe was one polity--_politeia tou kosmou_--in virtue of the spirit that was its origin and its life, of the common end to which it tended, of the absolute and universal scope of the laws it obeyed--mind, matter, God, man, formed one community. The soul of the individual Roman partook of the very nature of God--_divinae particula aurae_[12]--and in a way stood nearer to the divine than did anything else in the world, every detail of which, however, was some manifestation of the same divine essence. All men were in truth of one blood, of one family,--all and each, as Seneca says, sacred to each and all.[13] (_Unum me donavit_ [_sc. Natura rerum_] _omnibus, uni mihi omnes_.) [Sidenote: Harmony with nature] Taught by the Stoic, the troubled Roman looked upon himself at once as a fragment of divinity,[14] an entity self-conscious and individual, and as a member of a divine system expressive of one divine idea, which his individuality subserved. These thoughts gave him ground and strength. If he seemed to be the slave and plaything of an Emperor or an imperial freedman, none the less a divine life pulsed within him, and he was an essential part of "the world." He had two havens of refuge--the universe and his own soul--both quite beyond the reach of the oppressor. Over and over we find both notes sounded in the writings of the Stoics and their followers--God within you and God without you. "Jupiter is all that you see, and all that lives within you."[15] There is a Providence that rules human and all other affairs; nothing happens that is not appointed; and to this Providence every man is related. "He who has once observed with understanding the administration of the world, and learnt that the greatest and supreme and most comprehensive community is the system (_systema_) of men and God, and that from God come the seeds whence all things, and especially rational beings, spring, why should not that man call himself a citizen of the world [Socrates' word _kosmios_], why not a son of God?"[16] And when we consider the individual, we find that God {39} has put in his power "the best thing of all, the master thing"--the rational faculty.