Physics 175
it by qualitative change and finally are dissolved and resolved into it,
while fire itself is not subject to dissolution or breakdown into anything
else. So on this theory fire is said independently to be an element, since
it is not formed together with another one, while according to the earlier
theory fire is formed with other elements. For first there occurs the
change in form from fire to air, second occurs the analogous change from
water to earth. Again, from earth as it is resolved and dissolved the first
dissolution is into water, second from water to air, third and last to fire.
Everything fiery is called fire, and everything airy air and so forth.
"Element" is used in three senses by Chrysippus: in one sense fire is the
element since the others are formed from it by change of quality and the
breakdown is back into fire; in another sense there are said to be four
elements (fire, air, water, and earth)-since from one or more of these
or all of them everything else is formed: through the four, for example,
animals and all terrestrial compounds; through two, for example, the
moon is formed of fire and air; or through one, as the sun which is
formed of only fire-the sun being pure fire. And a third sense [here
there is a lacuna] to be what was first formed in this way, so that it
methodically produced generation from itself until the end [was reached]
and [then returning] from that point it received the breakdown into itself
by the same method. And he said that there have also been the following
descriptions of the element, that it is most mobile on its own, and the
principle
a nature such as to move itself both downwards towards conversion and
upwards away from the conversion again in a complete circle, both
absorbing all things into itself and again restoring them from itself in a
regular and methodical way.
Seneca Letters on Ethics 92.30 (SVF 2.637) [11-63]
Why shouldn't you think that there is something divine in him who
is a part of god? All of that which contains us is one and is god. And
we are his allies and parts.Nemesius On the Nature of Man 2
(SVF 2.773)
[11-64]Practically all the ancients disagree on the theory of the soul. For
Democritus and Epicurus and the entire Stoic school claim that the soul
is a body. And these same people who claim that the soul is a body disagree
about its substance. For the Stoics say it is a warm and fiery pneuma.