What think you of those, who have asserted that the whole doctrine concerning the immortal Gods was the invention of politicians, whose view was to govern that part of the com- _ munity by religion, which reason could not influence? Are not their opinions subversive of allreligion? Or what religion did Prodicus the Chian leave to men, who held that every- thing beneficial to human life should be numbered amongst the Gods? Were not they likewise void of religion, who taught that the Deities, at present the object of our prayers 42 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS, and adoration, were valiant, illustrious and mighty men, who arose to divinity after death? Euhemerus, whom our Ennius translated, and followed more than other authors, has par- ticularly advanced this doctrine, and treated of the deaths and burials of the Gods; can he then be said to have confirmed religion, or rather to have totally subverted it? I shall say nothing of that sacred and august Eleusina, into whose mysteries the most distant nations were initiated, nor of the solemnities in Samothrace, or in Lemnos, secretly resorted to by night, and surrounded by thick and shady groves; which, if they were properly explained, and reduced to reasonable principles, would rather explain the nature of things, than discover the knowledge of the Gods.
XLIII. Even that great man Democritus, from whose fountains Epicurus watered his little garden, seems to me to be very inferior to his usual acuteness ‘when speaking about the nature of the Gods. For at one time he thinks, that there are images endowed with divinity, inherent in the universality of things; atanother, that the principles and minds contained in the universe are Gods; then he attributes divinity to animated images, employing themselves in doing us good or harm; and lastly, he speaks of certain ‘images of such vast extent that they encompass the whole outside of the universe; all which opinions are more worthy of thé country' of Demo- critus than of Democritus himself; for who can frame in his mind any ideas of such images? Who can admire them? Who can think they merit a religious adoration?
But Epicurus, when he divests the Gods of the power of doing good, extirpates all religion from the minds of men; for though he says the divine nature is the best and the most excellent of all natures, he will not allow it to be susceptible - of any benevolence; by which he destroys the chief and peculiar attribute of the most perfect being; for what is better and more excellent than goodness and beneficence? To refuse your Gods that quality, is to say that no man is any object of their favour, and no Gods either; that they neither love nor esteem any one; in short, that they not only give themselves no trouble about us, but even look on each other with the greatest indifference. 3 _ 1 His country was Abdera, the natives of which were remarkable for their stupidity,: |? $ OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 43 XLIV. How much more reasonable is the doctrine of the Stoics, whom you censure? It is one of.their maxims, that the wise are friends to the wise, though unknown to each other; for as nothing is more amiable than virtue, he who possesses it is worthy our love, to whatever country he be- longs. But what evils do your principles bring, when you make good actions and benevolence the marks of imbecility? For, not to mention the power and nature of the Gods, you hold that even men, if they had no need of mutual assistance, would be neither courteous nor beneficent. Is there no natural charity in the dispositions of good men? ‘The very name of love, from which friendship is derived, is dear to men;' and if friendship is to centre im our own advantage only, ~ without regard to him whom we esteem a friend, it cannot be called friendship, but a sort of traffic for our own profit. Pastures, lands, and herds of cattle, are valued in the same manner on account of the profit we gather from them; but charity and friendship expect no return. How much more reason have we to think that the Gods, who want nothing, should love each other, and employ themselves about us! If. it were not so, why should we pray to, or adore them? Why do the priests preside over the altars, and the augurs over the auspices? What have we to ask of. the Gods, and as do we prefer our vows to them?
But Epicurus, you say, has written a book concerning sanctity. <A trifling performance by a man whose wit is not so remarkable in it, as the unrestrained licence of writing which he has permitted himself; for what sanctity can there be if the Gods take no care of human affairs? Or how can that nature be called animated, which neither regards nor performs anything? ‘Therefore our friend Posidonius has well observed, in his fifth book of the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus believed there were no Gods, and that what he had said about the immortal Gods was only said from a desire to avoid unpopularity. He could not be so weak as to:imagine that the Deity has only the outward features of a simple mortal, without any real solidity; that he has all the mem- bers of a man, without the least power to use them; a certain 1 This passage will not admit of a translation answerable to the sense of the original. Cicero says the word amicitia sea aid is derived from amor (love or affection). big d aw 44 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
unsubstantial pellucid being, neither favourable nor beneficial to any one, neither regarding nor doing anything: there can be no such being in nature; and as Epicurus said this plainly, he allows the Gods in words, and destroys them in fact; and if the Deity is truly such a being that he shows no favour, no benevolence to mankind, away with him! For why should I entreat him to be propitious? He can be propitious to none, since, as you say, all his favour and benevolence are the effects of imbecility.
BOOK II.
T. Wuewn Cotta had thus concluded, Velleius replied, I cer- tainly was inconsiderate to engage in argument with an Aca- demician who is likewise a rhetorician; I should not have feared an Academician without eloquence, nor a rhetorician without that philosophy, however eloquent he might be; for I am never puzzled by an empty flow of words, nor by the most subtle reasonings delivered without any grace of oratory. But you, Cotta, have excelled in both. You only wanted the assembly and the judges. However, enough of this at pre- sent. Now let us hear what Lucilius has to say, if it is agreeable to him.
I had much rather, says Balbus, hear Cotta resume his dis- course, and demonstrate the true Gods with the same eloquence which he made use of to explode the false; for on such a-sub- ject the loose, unsettled doctrine of the Academy does not become a philosopher, a priest, a Cotta, whose opinions should be, like those we hold, firm and certain. Epicurus has been more than sufficiently refuted; but, would willingly hear your own sentiments, Cotta.
Do you forget, replies Cotta, what I at first said, that ‘it is easier forme, especially on this point, to explain what opinions those are which I do not hold, rather than what those are which I do? Nay, even if I did feel some cer- tainty on any particular point, yet, after having been so diffuse myself already, I would prefer now hearing you speak in your turn. I submit, says Balbus, and will be as brief as I possibly can; for as you have confuted the OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 45 errors of Epicurus, my part in the dispute will be the shorter. Our sect divide the whole question coricerning the immortal Gods:into four parts. Jirst, they prove that there are Gods; secondly, of what character and nature they are; thirdly, that the universe is governed by them; and lastly, that they exercise a superintendence over human affairs. But in this present discussion let us confine ourselves to the first two articles, and defer the third and fourth till another oppor- tunity, as they require more time to discuss. By no means, says Cotta; for we have time enough on our hands, besides that we are now discussing a subject which should be pre- ferred even to serious business.
II. The first point then, says Lucilius, I think needs no discourse to prove it; for what can be so plain and evident, when we behold the heavens, and contemplate the celestial bodies, as the existence of some supreme, divine intelligence, by which all these things are governed? Were it otherwise, Ennius would not, with an universal approbation, have said, Look up to the refulgent heaven above, Which all men call, unanimously, Jove.
This: is Jupiter, the governor of the world, who rules all things with his nod, and is, as the same Ennius adds, of Gods and men the sire,’ - an omnipresent and omnipotent God. And if any one doubts this, I really do not understand why the same man may not also doubt whether there is a sun or not. For what can possibly be more evident than this? And if it were not a truth universally impressed on the minds of men, the belief in it would never have been so firm; nor would it have been, as it is, increased by length of years, nor would it have gathered strength and stability through every age. And in truth we see that other opinions, being false and groundless, have already fallen into oblivion by lapse of time. Who now believes in Hippocentaurs and Chimeras? Or what old woman is now to be found so weak and ignorant, as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which once: so terrified mankind? For time destroys the fictions of error ’ This manner of speaking of Jupiter frequently occurs in Homer, TaTho avdpav Te Cedy Te, and has been used by Virgil and other poets since Ennius.
46 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
and opinion, while it confirms the determinations of nature and of truth. And therefore it is that, both amongst us and amongst other nations, sacred institutions and the divine worship of the Gods have been strengthened and improved from time to time. And this is not to be imputed to chance or folly, but to the frequent appearance of the Gods them- selves. In the war with the Latins, when A. Posthumius the dictator attacked Octavius Mamilius the Tusculan at Regillus, Castor and Pollux were seen fighting in our army on horse- back; and since that the same offspring of Tyndarus gave notice of the defeat of Perses; for as P. Vatienus, the grand- father of the present young man of that name, was coming in the night to Rome from his government of Reate, two young men on white horses appeared to him, and told him that king’ Perses was that day taken prisoner. This news he carried to the senate, who immediately threw him into prison for speak- ing inconsiderately on a state affair; but when it was confirmed by letters from Paullus, he was recompensed by the senate with land and immunities.2 Nor do we forget when the Locrians defeated the people of Crotone, in a great battle on the banks of the river Sagra, that it was known the same day at the Olympic Games. The voices of the Fauns have been often heard, and Deities have appeared in forms so visible, that they have compelled every one who is not senseless ‘or _ hardened in impiety to confess the presence of the Gods.
III. What do predictions and foreknowledge of future events indicate, but that such future events are shown, pointed out, portended, and foretold to men? From whence they are called omens, signs, portents, prodigies. But though we Should esteem fabulous what is said of Mopsus,* Tiresias,* 1 Perses, or Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, was taken by Cnzeus Octavius the preetor, and brought as prisoner to Paullus Hmilius, 2 An exemption from serving in the wars, and from paying public taxes..
3 Mopsus. There were two soothsayers of this name: the first was one of the Lapithe, son of Ampycus and Chloris; called also the son of Apollo and Hienantis; the other a son of Apollo and Manto, who is said to have founded Mallus in Asia Minor, where his oracle existed as late as the time of Strabo.
* Tiresias was the great Theban prophet at the time of the war of the Seven against Thebes.: it i 4a OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. AT Amphiaraus,' Calchas,’ and Helenus,* (who,would not have been delivered down to us as augurs even in fable, if their art had been despised,) may we not be sufficiently apprised of the power of the Gods by domestic examples? Will not the temerity of P. Claudius, in the first Punic war, affect us? who, when the poultry were let out of the coop and would not feed, ordered them to be thrown into the water, and, joking even upon the Gods, said, with a sneer, Let them drink, since they will not eat; which piece of ridicule, being followed by a victory over his fleet, cost him many tears, and brought great calamity on the Roman people. Did not his colleague Junius, in the same war, lose his fleet in a tempest by disre- carding the auspices? Claudius therefore was condemned by the people; and Junius killed himself. Ccelius says, that Er. Fiaminius, from his neglect of religion, fell at Thrasimenus; a loss which the public severely felt. By these instances of calamity we may be assured that Rome owes her grandeur and success to the conduct of those who were tenacious of their religious duties; and if we compare ourselves to our neighbours, we shall find that we are infinitely distinguished. above foreign nations by our zeal for religious ceremonies, though in other things we may be only equal to them, and in other respects even inferior to them.
Ought we to contemn Attius Navius’s staff, with which he divided the regions of the vine to find his sow! I should despise it, if I were not aware that king Hostilius had carried on most important wars in deference to his auguries; but by 1 Amphiaraus was king of Argos; (he had been one of the Argonauts also.) He was killed after the war of the Seven against Thebes, which he was compelled to join in by the treachery of his wife Hriphyle, by the earth opening and swallowing him up as he was fleeing from Periclymenus.
2 Calchas was the prophet of the Grecian army at the siege of Troy.
% Helenus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He is represented as & prophet in the Philoctetes of:Sophocles, And in the Mneid he is also represented as king of part of Epirus, and as calaporaiys to Aineas the dangers and fortunes which awaited him.
* Thi oe passage would be very obscure to the reader without an explanation from another of Cicero’s treatises. The expression here, ad investigandum suem regiones vine terminavit, which is a metaphor too bold, if it was not a sort of augural language, seems to me to have been the effect of carelessness in our great author; for Navius did not divide the regions, as he calls them, of the vine to find his sow, but to find & grape.
48 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
the negligence of our nobility the discipline of the augury is now omitted, the truth of the auspices despised, and only a mere form observed; so that the most important affairs of the commonwealth, even the wars, on which the public safety depends, are conducted without any auspices; the Peremnia! are discussed; no part of the Acumina’ performed; no select men are called to witness to the military testaments;* our generals now begin their wars as soon as they have arranged the Auspicia. ‘The force of religion was so great amongst our ancestors that some of their commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the solemn formal expressions of reli- gion, sacrificed themselves to the immortai Gods to save their country.* I could mention many of the Sibylline prophecies, and many answers of the haruspices, to confirm those things, which ought not to be doubted.
IV. For example; our augurs and the Etrurian haruspices saw the truth of their art established when P. Scipio and C. Figulus were consuls; for as Tiberius Gracchus, who was a second time consul, wished to proceed to a fresh election, the first Rogator,® as he was collecting the suffrages, fell down dead on the spot. Gracchus nevertheless went on with the assembly, but perceiving that this accident had a religious influence on the people, he brought the affair before the senate. The senate thought fit to refer it to those who usually took cognizance of such things. The haruspices were called, and declared that the man who had acted as Rogater of the assembly, had no right to do so; to which, as I have 1 The Peremnia were a sort of auspices performed just before the passing a river.
2 The Acumina were a military auspices, and were partly performed on the point of a spear, from which they were called Acumina.
3 Those were called testamenta in procinctu, which were made by soldiers just before an engagement, in the presence of men called as witnesses. Bere 4 This especially refers to the Decii, one of whom devoted himself for his country in the war with the Latins, p.c. 340, and his son imitated the action in the war with the Samnites, p.c. 295. Cicero (Tuse. i. 37) says that his son did the same thing in the war with Pyrrhus, at the battle of Asculum, though in other places (De Off. iii. 4) he speaks of — only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this manner.
5 The Rogator, who collected the votes, and pronounced who was the person chosen. There were two sorts of Rogators; one was the officer here mentioned, and the other was the Rogator, or speaker of the whole assembly.
OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. - 49 heard my father say, he replied with great ‘warmth, Have I no right, who am consul, and augur, and favoured by the Auspicia? And shall you, who are Tuscans and Barbarians, pretend that you have authority over the Roman Auspicia, and a right to give judgment in matters respecting the forma- lity of our assemblies? Therefore, he then commanded them to withdraw; but not long afterwards he wrote from his province’ to the college of augurs, acknowledging that in reading the books” he remembered that he had illegally chosen a place for his tent in the gardens of Scipio, and had afterwards entered the Pomeerium, in order to hold a senate, but that in repassing the same Pomeerium he had forgotten to take the auspices; and that, therefore, the consuls had been created informally. The augurs laid the case before the senate. The senate decreed that they should resign their charge, and so they accordingly abdicated. What greater example need we seek for? The wisest, perhaps the most excellent of men, chose to confess his fault, which he might have concealed, rather than leave the public the least atom of religious guilt; and the consuls chose to quit the highest office in the state, rather than fill it for a moment in defiance of religion. How great is the reputation of the augurs!
And is not the art of the soothsayers divine? And must not every one who sees what innumerable instances of the same kind there are, confess the existence of the Gods? For they who have interpreters, must certainly exist them- selves; now, there are interpreters of the Gods; there- fore we must allow there are Gods. But it may be said, perhaps, that all predictions are not accomplished. We may as well conclude there is no art of physic, because all sick persons do not recover. The Gods show us signs of future events; if we are occasionally deceived in the results it is not to be imputed to the nature of the Gods, but to the con- jectures of men. All nations agree that there are Gods; the opinion is innate, and as it were engraved in the minds of allmen. ‘The only point in dispute amongst us is, what they are. | VY. Their existence no one denies. Cleanthes, one of our sect, imputes the way in which the idea of the Gods is 1 Which was Sardinia, as appears from one of Cicero’s epistles to his brother Quintus. 2 Their sacred books of ceremonies. DE NAT. ETC., E my 50 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
implanted in the minds of men, to four causes. The first is that which I just now mentioned, the foreknowledge of future things. The second is, the great advantages which we enjoy from the temperature of the air, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of various benefits of other kinds. The third cause is deduced from the terror with which the mind is affected by thunder, tempests, storms, snow, hail, devastation, pestilence, earthquakes. often attended with hideous noises, showers of stones, and rain like drops of blood; by rocks and sudden openings of the earth; by mon- strous births of men and beasts; by meteors in the air, and | blazing stars, by the Greeks called comete, by us orn, the appearance of which, in the late Octavian war,' were fore- boders of great calamities;; by two suns, which, as I have _ beard my father say, happened in the consulate of Tuditanus and Aquillius, and in which year also another sun (P. Africanus) was extinguished. These things terrified man- kind, and raised in them a firm belief of the existence of some celestial and divine power.
His fourth cause, and that the strongest, is drawn from the regularity of the motion and revolution of the heavens, the ¢ distinctness, variety, beauty, and order of the sun, moon, and ~vall the stars, the appearance only of which is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of chance; as when we enter into a house, or school, or court, and observe the exact order, discipline, and method of it, we cannot suppose that it is so regulated without a cause, but must conclude that there is some one who commands, and to whom obedience is paid; it is quite impossible for us to avoid thinking that the won-- derful motions, revolutions, and order of those many and great bodies, no part of which is impaired by the countless - and infinite succession of ages, must be governed and directed by some supreme intelligent being.
VI. Chrysippus, indeed, had a very penetrating genius; yet such is the doctrine which he delivers, that he seems rather to have been instructed by nature, than to owe it to any dis- _ covery of his own. “If” says he, “ there is anything in the universe which no human reason, ability, or power can make, the being who produced it must certainly be preferable to man; now celestial bodies, and all those things which proceed 1 The war between Octavius and Cinna, the consuls.
OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 51 in any eternal order, cannot be made by man; the being who made them is therefore preferable to man. What then is that being but a God? If there be no such thing as a Deity, what is there better than man, since he only is pos- sessed of reason, the most excellent of all things? But it is a, foolish piece of vanity in man to think there is nothing preferable to him; there is therefore something preferable; consequently there is certainly a God.” | When you behold a large and beautiful house, surely no one can persuade you it was built for mice and weasels, though you do not see the master; and would it not, there- fore, be most manifest folly to imagine that a world so magni- ficently adorned, with such an immense variety of celestial bodies of such exquisite beauty, and that the vast sizes and magnitude of the sea and land, were intended as the abode of man, and not as the mansion of the immortal Gods? Do we not also plainly see this, that all the most elevated regions are the best, and that the earth is the lowest region, and is surrounded with the grossest air? so that as we perceive that in some cities and countries, the capacities of men are naturally duller from the thickness of the climate, so man- kind in general are affected by the heaviness of the air which surrounds the earth, the grossest region of the world.
Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the existence of some. intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than ourselves; for, as Socrates says, in Xenophon, from. whence had man his portion of understanding? And, indeed, if any one were to push his inquiries about the moisture and heat which is diffused through the human body, and the earthy kind of solidity existing in our entrails, and that soul by which we breathe, and to ask whence we derived them, it would be plain that we have received one thing from the earth, another from liquid, another from fire, and another from that air which we inhale every time that we breathe. | | VII. But where did we find that which excels all these things, I mean reason, or (if you please, in other terms) the mind, understanding, thought, prudence? and from whence did we receive it? Shall the world be possessed of every other perfection, and be destitute of this one, which is the most important and valuable of all? But certainly there'is nothing 52 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
better, or more excellent, or more beautiful than the world, and not, only there is nothing better, but we cannot even conceive anything superior to it; and if reason and wisdom are the greatest of all perfections, they must necessarily be a part of what we all allow to be the most excellent.
Who is not compelled to admit the truth of what I assert by that agreeable, uniform, and continued agreement of things in the universe? Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow? Or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated? Could the flux and reflux of the sea and the height of the tides be affected by the increase or wane of the moon? Could the different courses of the stars be preserved by the uniform movement of the whole heaven? Could these things subsist, I say, in such a harmony of all the parts of the universe, without the continued influence of a divine spirit?
If these points are handled in a free and copious manner, as I purpose to do, they wil! be less liable to the cavils of the Academics; but the narrow, confined way in which Zeno reasoned upon them, laid them more open to objection; for as running streams are seldom or never tainted, while standing waters easily grow corrupt, so a fluency of expression washes away the censures of the caviller, while the narrow limits of _ a discourse which is too concise is almost defenceless; for the arguments which I am enlarging upon are thus briefly laid down by Zeno:— VIil. “That which reasons, is superior to that which does not; nothing is superior to the world; the world, therefore, reasons.” By the same rule the world may be proved to be wise, happy, and eternal; for the possession of all these qualities is superior to the want of them; and nothing is superior to the world; the inevitable consequence of which argument is, that the world therefore is a Deity. He goes on, “ No part of anything void of sense is capable of percep- tion; some parts of the world have perception; the world _ therefore has sense.” He proceeds, and pursues the argument closely. “Nothing,” says he, “that is destitute itself of life and reason, can generate a being possessed of life and reason; but the world does generate beings possessed of life and OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. | 5o reason; _ the world therefore is not itsclf destitute of life and reason.’
He wool his argument in his usual manner with a simile: “If well-tuned pipes should spring out of the olive, . would you have the slightest doubt that there was in the olive-tree itself some kind of skill and knowledge? or if the plane-tree could produce harmonious lutes, surely you would infer on the same principle that music was contained in the plane-tree, Why, then, should we not believe the world is a living and wise being, since it produces living and wise beings eut of itself?”
IX. But as I have been insensibly led into a length of dis- course beyond my first design, (for I said that as the existence of the Gods was evident to all, there was no need of any long oration to prove it,) I will demonstrate it by reasons deduced from the nature of things. For it is a fact, that all beings which take nourishment and increase, contain in themselves a power of natural heat, without which they could neither be nourished nor increase. For everything which is of a warm and fiery character is agitated and stirred up by its own motion. But that which is nourished and grows is influenced by a certain regular and equable motion. And as long as this motion remains in us, so long does sense and life remain; but the moment that it abates and is extinguished, we our- selves decay and perish.
By arguments like these, Cleanthes shows how great is the power of heat in all bodies. He observes, that there is no food so gross as not to be digested in a night and a day; and that even in the excrementitious parts, which nature rejects, there remains a heat. The veins and arteries seem, by their continual quivering, to resemble the agitation of fire; and it has often been observed when the heart of an animal is just plucked from the body, that it palpitates with such visible motion as to resemble the rapidity of fire. Everything, therefore, that has life, whether it be animal or vegetable, ewes that life to the heat inherent in it; it is this nature of heat which contains in itself the vital power which extends throughout the whole world. This will appear more clearly on a more close explanation of this fiery quality, which per- vades all things.
Every division, then, of the world, (and I shall touch upon 54 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
the most considerable,) is sustained by heat; and first it may be observed in earthly substances, that fire is produced from stones, by striking or rubbing” one against another; that “the warm earth smokes”’ when just turned up, and that water is drawn warm from well-springs; and this is most especially the case in the winter season, because there is a great quan- tity of heat contained in the caverns of the earth; and this becomes more dense in the winter, and on that account con- fines more closely the innate heat which is discoverable in the earth.
X. It would require a long dissertation, and many reasons would require to be adduced, to show that all the seeds — which the earth conceives, and all those which it contains having been generated from itself, and fixed in roots and trunks, derive all their origin and increase from the tempe- -rature and regulation of heat. And that even every liquor has a mixture of heat in it is plainly demonstrated by the effusion of water; for it would not congeal by cold, nor become solid, as ice or snow, and return again to its natural state, if it were not that, when heat is applied to it, it again becomes liquefied and dissolved, and so diffuses itself. There- fore by northern and other cold winds it is frozen and hardened, and in turn it dissolves and melts again by heat. The seas likewise, we find, when agitated by winds, grow warm, so that from this fact we may understand that there is heat included in that vast body of water; for we cannot imagine it to be external and adventitious heat, but such as is stirred up by agitation from the deep-recesses of the seas; and . the same thing takes place with respect to our bodies, which grow warm with motion and exercise.
And the very air itself, which indeed is the coldest element, is by no means void of heat; for there is a great quantity, arising from the exhalations of water, which appears to be a sort of steam occasioned by its internal heat, like that of boiling liquors. The fourth part of the universe is entirely fire, and is the source of the salutary and vital heat which. is found in the rest. From hence we may conclude, that, as all parts of the world are sustained by heat, the world itself also has such a great length of time subsisted from the same 1 This, in the original, is a fragment of an old Latin verse, —-——. Terram fumare calentem.
1a Ly han a ~ gin OF THE‘NATURE OF THE GODS. 55.
cause; and so much the more because we ought to understand that that hot and fiery principle is so diffused over universal nature, that there is contained in it a power and cause of generation and procreation, from which all animate beings and all those creatures of the vegetable world, the roots of which are contained in the earth, must inevitably derive their origin and their increase.
XI. It is nature consequently that continues and preserves the world; and that, too, a nature which is not destitute of sense and reason; for in every essence that is not simple, but composed of several parts, there must be some predominant quality; as for instance, the mind in man, and in beasts some- thing resembling it; from which arise all the appetites and desires for anything. As for trees, and all the vegetable produce of the earth, it is thought to be in their roots. I call that | the predominant quality,’ which the Greeks call qyeuovucdr; which must and ought to be the most excellent quality, wher- ever it isfound. That, therefore, in which the prevailing quality of all nature resides, must be the most excellent of all things and most worthy of the power and preeminence over all things.
Now we see that there is nothing in being that is not a part of the universe, and as there are sense and reason in the parts of it, there must therefore be these qualities, and these too in a more energetic and powerful degree, in that part in which the predominant quality of the world is found. The world, therefore, must necessarily be possessed of wisdom; and that element, which embraces all things, must excel in perfection of reason. The world, therefore, is a God, and the whole power of the world is contained in that divine element. |