her be called perceptions.
Now the rational faculty, in virtue of which we are called reasoning
beings, is developed out of, or over and beyond, the mass of
perceptions, in the second seven years' period of life. In fact a
thought may be defined as a kind of mental image, such as a rational
animal alone is capable of having."

Thus there are various gradations of mental apprehensions; first, those
of sensible qualities obtained through the action of the objects and
the assent of the perceiving subject, as already described; then by
experience, by comparison, by analogy, by the combinations of the
reasoning faculty, further and more general notions are arrived at, and
conclusions formed, as, for example, that the gods exist and exercise a
providential care over the world. By this faculty also the wise man
ascends to the apprehension of the good and true.

The physics of the Stoics started from the fundamental [398]
proposition that in the universe of things there were two elements--the
active and the passive. {233} The latter was Matter or unqualified
existence; the former was the reason or qualifying element in Matter,
that is, God, who being eternal, is the fashioner of every individual
thing throughout the universe of matter. God is One; He is Reason, and
Fate, and Zeus. In fact all the gods are only various representations
of His faculties and powers. He being from the beginning of things by
Himself, turneth all existence through air to water. And even as the
genital seed is enclosed in the semen, so also was the seed of the
world concealed in the water, making its matter apt for the further
birth of things; then first it brought into being the four
elements--fire, water, air, earth. For there was a finer fire or air
which was the moving spirit of things; later and lower than this were
the material elements of fire and air. It follows that the universe of
things is threefold; there is first God Himself, the source of all
character and individuality, who is indestructible and eternal, the
fashioner of all things, who in certain cycles of ages gathers up all
things into Himself, and then out of Himself brings them again to
birth; there is the matter of the universe whereon God works; and
thirdly, there is the union of the two. Thus the world is governed by
reason and forethought, and this reason extends through every part,
even as the soul or life extends to every part of us. The universe
therefore is a li