The Stoic System of Reason

According to the Stoics, matter is a passive subject. The cult of matter implies ignoring soul and intelligence. It must therefore be matter which perceives these things and expresses them. If we should ask whether matter utter sensible things, we might indeed ask ourselves how matter thinks and fulfills the functions of the soul. Although matter lacks both soul and intelligence, it could speak if it could speak. But matter does not speak, and he who speaks thus only because he has borrowed much from matter, that he has become its slave,. though he have a soul.