ng
in all nature superior to him--I do not see what can be more consistent
with this idea and preconception than to attribute a mind and divinity
to the world,[125] the most excellent of all beings.

Epicurus may be as merry with this notion as he pleases; a man not the
best qualified for a joker, as not having the wit and sense of his
country.[126] Let him say that a voluble round Deity is to him
incomprehensible; yet he shall never dissuade me from a principle which
he himself approves, for he is of opinion there are Gods when he allows
that there must be a nature excellently perfect. But it is certain that
the world is most excellently perfect: nor is it to be doubted that
whatever has life, sense, reason, and understanding must excel that
which is destitute of these things. It follows, then, that the world
has life, sense, reason, and understanding, and is consequently a
Deity. But this shall soon be made more manifest by the operation of
these very things which the world causes.

XVIII. In the mean while, Velleius, let me entreat you not to be always
saying that we are utterly destitute of every sort of learning. The
cone, you say, the cylinder, and the pyramid, are more beautiful to you
than the sphere. This is to have different eyes from other men. But
suppose they are more beautiful to the sight only, which does not
appear to me, for I can see nothing more beautiful than that figure
which contains all others, and which has nothing rough in it, nothing
offensive, nothing cut into angles, nothing broken, nothing swelling,
and nothing hollow; yet as there are two forms most esteemed,[127] the
globe in solids (for so the Greek word [Greek: sphaira], I think,
should be construed), and the circle, or orb, in planes (in Greek,
[Greek: kyklos]); and as they only have an exact similitude of parts in
which every extreme is equally distant from the centre, what can we
imagine in nature to be more just and proper? But if you have never
raked into this learned dust[128] to find out these things, surely, at
all events, you natural philosophers must know that equality of motion
and invariable order could not be preserved in any other figure.
Nothing, therefore, can be more illiterate than to assert, as you are
in the habit of doing, that it is doubtful whether the world is round
or not, because it may possibly be of another shape, and that there are
innumerable worlds of different forms; which Epicurus, if he ever had
learne