3. Dualistic Materialism

In the seventeenth century the Epicurean atomism was revived by Pierre Gassendi (q.v.), who led the way to a mechanical-physical conception of the world and thus to modern materialism. But whereas Gassendi was unable to include the Deity in his materialistic conception of the universe, placing God rather above this world of phenomena in which only secondary causes are operative, long before his day the Stoics had made their noteworthy attempt to include God as a factor in the material world, thus leading up to a dualistic materialism. Because they emphasized so strongly an ethical idealism which amounts to rigorism, they have been a good deal neglected by historians of materialism; and yet they were thorough-going and logical materialists. All reality to them is corporeal; the Godhead exists, therefore it must be corporeal, ie., material, and so must the soul, and even the virtues.and affections of the soul. It is true they often speak of two principles, thus apparently following Plato or Aristotle; but a closer scrutiny of their views shows that the active formative principle is considered as definitely material. The four elements are not eternal, nor do they spring from different sources, but all come from the one primal matter, which the Stoics, here following Heraclitus, regard as fire. This fire, the artificer of the world, pervades the whole universe and is called God. They also call the Deity anima mundi, the worldsoul, or Logos; but their Logos is material, not spiritual. In the evolution of the world, the Logos, as spermatikos, seminal, is contrasted with the other two coarser elements. It comprehends the single logoi spennahkoi, which are also thought of as material substances. But the kind of materialism which commended itself to the Stoics by its logical character found no adherents after the last real Stoic had occupied the imperial throne (see Stoicism). Christian philosophy gave a certain place to rahonea aeminalea, but regarded them as rather spiritual than material; there are traces of Stoic materialism in some of the Fathers, but Platonic metaphysics gained the upper hand, as being more in harmony with Christian spiritual ideas. In the Renaissance and later times Stoic philosophy has had more influence than is generally supposed; but its natural system has had but few and unimportant followers, and monism has generally triumphed in the region of materialism.

4. Mechanical and Organic Materialism