eternal principle which transfuses an inert, and no less eternal,
matter, and of which our souls are, as it were, but divine particles or
passing sparks. "God," he says, "is Nature, is Fate, is Fortune, is the
Universe, is the all-pervading Mind. He cannot change the substance of
the universe, He is himself under the power of Destiny, which is
uncontrollable and immutable. It is not God who rolls the thunder, it is
Fate. He does not rejoice in His works, but is identical with them." In
fact, Seneca would have heartily adopted the words of Pope:

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul."

Though there may be a vague sense in which those words may be admitted
and explained by Christians, yet, in the mind of Seneca, they led to
conclusions directly opposed to those of Christianity. With him, for
instance, the wise man is the _equal_ of God; not His adorer, not His
servant, not His suppliant, but His associate, His relation. He differs
from God in time alone. Hence all prayer is needless he says, and the
forms of external worship are superfluous and puerile. It is foolish to
beg for that which you can impart to yourself. "What need is there of
_vows_? Make _yourself_ happy." Nay, in the intolerable arrogance which
marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, the wise man is under certain
aspects placed even higher than God--higher than God Himself--because
God is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise man is superior to
their anguish; and because God is good of necessity, but the wise man
from choice. This wretched and inflated paradox occurs in Seneca's
treatise _On Providence_, and in the same treatise he glorifies suicide,
and expresses a doubt as to the immortality of the soul.

Again, the two principles on which Seneca relied as the basis of all his