The pantheistic character of this philosophy is now evident. The world-reason, God, whatever the Stoic might call it, is all, embraces all within itself, and permeates all. This conception is in marked contrast to the teachings of Aristotle and the later Platonists, who conceived of God as transcendent, removed from the world about us. We have here the doctrine of the immanence of God, in whom all things live and move and have their being, because the world-reason is the principle on which all life and action directly depend. In this doctrine of the immanence of God the Stoics brought together again the worlds of matter and of reason which Plato had separated; and in the pantheistic character of this teaching they established a belief which later fitted in with the general course of pagan thought under the Roman Empire, when philosophy and religion were at one in recognizing the existence in the world of but a single divine principle, although all systems, including Stoicism, found a way to provide for the multitude of gods which popular belief demanded. The Stoic theology then is in technical language a materialistic pantheism, and the world is only a mode of God. Such abstractions are difficult to grasp and have no personal meaning for the common man. But in practice the Stoic thought and spoke of God as a personality. Nowhere is this feeling expressed with so much devotion as in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus; the language is largely that of poetic tradition, but the thought is not that of common polytheism: Most glorious of immortals, many named, powerful over all, Zeus, thou author of all nature, guiding all with law, Hail to thee. Thee ’tis right all mortals should address, For from thee men derive their race, they who alone Of all things mortal, living, creeping on the ground, Have gift of speech. So will I hymn thee, and thy power forever sing. For thee this entire cosmos, circling earth around, Obeys where’er thou leadest, and ’tis gladly ruled by thee. Such servant hast thou in thy hands invincible, The two-edged thunderbolt, ever living flame. For by its strokes are all things in nature wrought; With it thou dost direct the common law, which throughout all Forever moves, with every gleam commingled, great and small. ’Tis this hath made thee supreme king o’er all; For naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God, Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep, Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.[227]