being balanced, as it were, between two equal weights.
That, then, is its natural seat where it has penetrated to something
like itself, and where, wanting nothing further, it may be supported
and maintained by the same aliment which nourishes and maintains the
stars.

Now, as we are usually incited to all sorts of desires by the stimulus
of the body, and the more so as we endeavor to rival those who are in
possession of what we long for, we shall certainly be happy when, being
emancipated from that body, we at the same time get rid of these
desires and this rivalry. And that which we do at present, when,
dismissing all other cares, we curiously examine and look into
anything, we shall then do with greater freedom; and we shall employ
ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things;
because there is naturally in our minds a certain insatiable desire to
know the truth, and the very region itself where we shall arrive, as it
gives us a more intuitive and easy knowledge of celestial things, will
raise our desires after knowledge. For it was this beauty of the
heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which gave birth to that
national and hereditary philosophy (as Theophrastus calls it), which
was thus excited to a desire of knowledge. But those persons will in a
most especial degree enjoy this philosophy, who, while they were only
inhabitants of this world and enveloped in darkness, were still
desirous of looking into these things with the eye of their mind.

XX. For if those men now think that they have attained something who
have seen the mouth of the Pontus, and those straits which were passed
by the ship called Argo, because,

From Argos she did chosen men convey,
Bound to fetch back the Golden Fleece, their prey;

or those who have seen the straits of the ocean,

Where the swift waves divide the neighboring shores
Of Europe, and of Afric;

what kind of sight do you imagine that will be when the whole earth is
laid open to our view? and that, too, not only in its position, form,
and boundaries, nor those parts of it only which are habitable, but
those also that lie uncultivated, through the extremities of heat and
cold to which they are exposed; for not even now is it with our eyes
that we view what we see, for the body itself has no senses; but (as
the naturalists, ay, and even the physicians assure us, who have opened
our bodies, and examined them) there are certain perforated c