conventionally right and what is conventionally wrong, between what deserves praise and what deserves blame. [396] Moreover, it is impossible to think of destiny without thinking of the world, or to think of the world without thinking of the Gods, who are supremely good. Hence the idea of destiny involves also that of goodness, which again includes the contrast between virtue and vice, between what is praiseworthy and what is blameworthy. [397] If his opponents objected that, if everything is determined by destiny, individual action is superfluous, since what has been once foreordained must happen, come what may, Chrysippus replied:—There is a distinction to be made between simple and complex predestination; the consequences of human actions being simply results of those actions, are quite as much foreordained as the actions themselves. [398] From these observations, it appears that the Stoics never intended to allow man to hold a different position, in regard to destiny, from that held by other beings. All the actions of man—in fact, his destiny—are decided by his relation to things: one individual only differs from another in that one acts on his own impulse, and agreeably with his own feelings, whereas another, under compulsion and against his will, conforms to the eternal law of the world. [399] [C. Nature of the world.] Everything in the world being produced by one and the same divine power, the world, as regards its structure, is an organic whole, in respect of its [(1) Its unity and perfections.] constitution perfect. The unity of the world, a doctrine distinguishing the Stoics from the Epicureans, followed as a corollary from the unity of primary substance and of primary force. [400] It was further proved by the intimate connection, or, as the Stoics called it, the sympathy of all its parts, and, in particular, by the coincidence of the phenomena of earth and heaven. [401] The perfection of the world follows generally from a consideration of fundamental principles. [402] But the Stoics made use of many arguments in support of its perfection, appealing, after the example of preceding philosophers, sometimes to its beauty, and, at other times, to the adaptation of means to ends. [403] An appeal to beauty is the assertion of Chrysippus, that nature made many creatures for the sake of beauty, the peacock, for instance, for the sake of its tail [404];—and the dictum of Marcus Aurelius, that what is purely subsidiary and subservient to no purpose, even what is ugly or frightful in nature, has peculiar attractions of its own; [405] and the same kind of consideration may have led to the Stoic assertion, that no two things in nature are altogether alike. [406] Their chief argument, however, for the beauty of the world, was based on the shape, the size, and the colour of the heavenly structure. [407]