An illustrious athlete; then a mendicant dealer in water-melons; chief pontiff lastly of the sect of the Stoics; Cleanthes, as we see him in anecdote [49] at least, is always a loyal, sometimes a very quaintly loyal, follower of the Parmenidean or Stoic doctrine of detachment from all material things. It was at the most critical points perhaps of such detachment, that somewhere about the year three hundred before Christ, he put together the verses of his famous "Hymn." By its practical indifference, its resignation, its passive submission to the One, the undivided Intelligence, which dia pantôn phoita+--goes to and fro through all things, the Stoic pontiff is true to the Parmenidean schooling of his flock; yet departs from it also in a measure by a certain expansion of phrase, inevitable, it may be, if one has to speak at all about that chilly abstraction, still more make a hymn to it. He is far from the cold precept of Spinoza, that great re-assertor of the Parmenidean tradition: That whoso loves God truly must not expect to be loved by Him in return. In truth, there are echoes here from many various sources. Ek sou gar genos esmen+:--that is quoted, as you remember, by Saint Paul, so just after all to the pagan world, as its testimony to some deeper Gnôsis than its own. Certainly Cleanthes has conceived his abstract monotheism a little more winningly, somewhat better, than dry, pedantic Xenophanes; perhaps because Socrates and Plato have lived meanwhile. You might even fancy what he says an echo from Israel's devout response to the announcement: "The Lord thy God is one Lord." The Greek [50] certainly is come very near to his unknown cousin at Sion in what follows:-- kydist', athanatôn, polyônyme, pankrates aiei Zeu, physeos archêge, nomou meta panta kybernôn, chaire· se gar pantessi themis thnêtoisi prosaudan, k.t.l. Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, I. p. 151. Thou O Zeus art praised above all gods: many are Thy names and Thine is all power for ever. The beginning of the world was from Thee: and with law Thou rulest over all things. Unto Thee may all flesh speak: for we are Thy offspring. Therefore will I raise a hymn unto Thee: and will ever sing of Thy power. The whole order of the heavens obeyeth Thy word: as it moveth around the earth: With little and great lights mixed together: how great art Thou, King above all for ever! Nor is anything done upon earth apart from Thee: nor in the firmament, nor in the seas: Save that which the wicked do: by their own folly. But Thine is the skill to set even the crooked straight: what is without fashion is fashioned and the alien akin before Thee. Thus hast Thou fitted together all things in one: the good with the evil: That Thy word should be one in all things: abiding for ever.