([Greek: logos]), God, who is eternal and operates through all matter,
and produces all things. So Antoninus (v. 32) speaks of the reason
([Greek: logos])which pervades all substance ([Greek: ousia]), and
through all time by fixed periods (revolutions) administers the universe
([Greek: to pan]). God is eternal, and Matter is eternal. It is God who
gives form to matter, but he is not said to have created matter.
According to this view, which is as old as Anaxagoras, God and matter
exist independently, but God governs matter. This doctrine is simply the
expression of the fact of the existence both of matter and of God. The
Stoics did not perplex themselves with the in-soluble question of the
origin and nature of matter.[C] Antoninus also assumes a beginning of
things, as we now know them; but his language is sometimes very obscure.
I have endeavored to explain the meaning of one difficult passage (vii.
75, and the note).

[A] As to the word [Greek: ousia], the reader may see the
Index. I add here a few examples of the use of the word;
Antoninus has (v. 24), [Greek: hê sumpasa ousia], "the
universal substance." He says (xii. 30 and iv. 40), "there is
one common substance" ([Greek: ousia]), distributed among
countless bodies. In Stobaeus (tom. 1, lib. 1, tit. 14) there
is this definition, [Greek: ousian de phasin tôn ontôn hapantôn
tên prôtên hylên]. In viii. II, Antoninus speaks of [Greek: to
ousiôdes kai hyulikon], "the substantial and the material;" and
(vii. 10) he says that "everything material" ([Greek: enulon])
disappears in the substance of the whole ([Greek: tê tôn holôn
ousia]). The [Greek: ousia] is the generic name of that existence
which we assume as the highest or ultimate, because we conceive
no existence which can be coordinated with it and none above
it. It is the philosopher's "substance:" it is the ultimate