Upon closer examination, even the difference between the materialistic and idealistic description of God vanishes. God, according to Stoic principles, can only be invested with reality when He has a material form. Hence, when He is called the Soul, the Mind, or the Reason of the world, this language does not exclude, but rather presupposes, that these conceptions have bodies; and such bodies the Stoics thought to discern in that heated fluid which they at one time call the all-penetrating Breath, at another Ether, or primary Fire. [317] Each of these two determinations appeared to them indispensable, [318] and both became identical by assuming, as the Stoics did, that the infinite character of the divine Reason depends on the purity and lightness of the fiery material which composes it. [319] Seneca is therefore only following out the principles of his School when he pronounces it indifferent whether God is regarded as Destiny or as an all-pervading Breath. [320] Those who charge the Stoics with inconsistency for calling God at one time Reason, at another Soul of the universe, at another Destiny, at another Fire, Ether, or even the Universe, [321] forget that they are attaching to these terms a meaning entirely different from that in which they were used by them. [322] [(b) God original matter.] The more the two sides of the conception of God—the material and the ideal—are compared, the clearer it becomes that there is no difference between God and primary Matter. Both are one and the same substance, which, when regarded as the universal substratum, is known as undetermined matter; but when conceived of as acting force, is called all-pervading Ether, all-warming Fire, all-penetrating Air, Nature, Soul of the world, Reason of the world, Providence, Destiny, God. Matter and power, material and form, are not, as with Aristotle, things radically different, though united from all eternity. Far from it, the forming force resides in matter as such; it is in itself something material; it is identical with Ether, or Fire-element, or Breath. Hence the difference between efficient and material cause, between God and matter, resolves itself into the difference between Breath and other elements. This difference, too, is no original or ultimate difference. According to the Stoic teaching, every particular element has in process of time developed out of primary fire or God, and to God it will return at the end of every period of the world. [323] It is therefore only a derivative and passing difference with which we are here concerned. But taking the conception of Deity in its full meaning, it may be described as primary matter, as well as primary power. The sum total of all that is real is the divine Breath, moving forth from itself and returning to itself again. [324] Deity itself is primary fire, containing in itself in germ both God and matter; [325] the world in its original gaseous condition; [326] the Universal Substance