Skip to content
Wellsprings
cosmology

The Two Principles: Active and Passive

τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον

All that exists springs from two eternal partners: a divine reason that shapes, and a formless matter that waits to be shaped.

The Stoics taught that the whole cosmos rests on two co-eternal principles. One is passive — sheer formless matter, the raw "stuff" that can become anything but is nothing in particular. The other is active — the divine reason, or logos, that pervades matter as a fiery breath (pneuma) and molds it into every body, quality, and event. Neither can exist without the other, and together they make the single, rational, living universe; god is not outside the world but the shaping intelligence woven through it.

Where this idea shows up

13 Greek sources·2 Jewish-canon citations

Where to read it