[374] “Abstractedly, the theology of the Stoics appears as a materialistic pantheism; God is represented as a fire, and the world as a mode of God.” (GRANT, _The Ethics of Aristotle_, vol. i. p. 265.) In the famous “hymn of Cleanthes,” preserved, like so many other of the great wonders of classical literature, by Stobæus, Grant sees an emphatic recognition of the personality of God, but it is equally natural to regard the hymn as a more detailed expression of that necessity of submitting to Destiny—of living in accordance with nature—which Cleanthes enounces in that other famous fragment which Epictetus would have us hold ready to hand in all the circumstances of life:— “Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O Destiny, The way that I am bid by you to go: To follow I am ready. If I choose not, I make myself a wretch, and still must follow.” —EPICTETUS, _Encheir._ lii. (Long’s translation.) Epictetus, indeed, and Seneca, late comers in the history of Stoicism, have undoubtedly attained to a clear recognition of the personality of God. [375] See the “_De cohibenda ira_,” “_de cupiditate divitiarum_,” “_de invidia et odio_,” “_de adulatore et amico_.” [376] “_De garrulitate_,” “_de vitioso pudore_,” “_de vitando aere alieno_,” “_de curiositate_.” [377] “_De amicorum multitudine_,” and “_de adulatore et amico_”; “_de fraterno amore_,” “_de amore prolis_”; “_conjugalia præcepta_,” “_de exilio_,” “_consolatio ad uxorem_,” “_consolatio ad Apollonium_.” (“I can easily believe,” says Emerson, “that an anxious soul may find in Plutarch’s ‘Letter to his Wife Timoxena,’ a more sweet and reassuring argument on the immortality than in the Phædo of Plato.”) [378] Zeller says that “the most characteristic mark of the Plutarchian Ethics is their connexion with religion.”—(_Greek Philosophy_, translated by Alleyne and Abbott.) [379] _De Virtute Morali_, 440 E. [380] 444 C, D. (Cf. 451.) [381] 444 D. Cf. _Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat_, 15 E. [382] 445 C. [383] “_An virtus doceri possit_,” “_de virtute et vitio_,” 101, C, D.