ely, then I
would swear that the soul, be it air or fire, is divine. Just think, I
beseech you: can you imagine this wonderful power of memory to be sown
in or to be a part of the composition of the earth, or of this dark and
gloomy atmosphere? Though you cannot apprehend what it is, yet you see
what kind of thing it is, or if you do not quite see that, yet you
certainly see how great it is. What, then? Shall we imagine that there
is a kind of measure in the soul, into which, as into a vessel, all
that we remember is poured? That indeed is absurd; for how shall we
form any idea of the bottom, or of the shape or fashion of such a soul
as that? And, again, how are we to conceive how much it is able to
contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive impressions like wax, and
memory to be marks of the impressions made on the soul? What are the
characters of the words, what of the facts themselves? and what, again,
is that prodigious greatness which can give rise to impressions of so
many things? What, lastly, is that power which investigates secret
things, and is called invention and contrivance? Does that man seem to
be compounded of this earthly, mortal, and perishing nature who first
invented names for everything; which, if you will believe Pythagoras,
is the highest pitch of wisdom? or he who collected the dispersed
inhabitants of the world, and united them in the bonds of social life?
or he who confined the sounds of the voice, which used to seem
infinite, to the marks of a few letters? or he who first observed the
courses of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws? These
were all great men. But they were greater still who invented food, and
raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization among us, and armed us
against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished,
and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments.
For we have provided great entertainments for the ears by inventing and
modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learned to survey
the stars, not only those that are fixed, but also those which are
improperly called wandering; and the man who has acquainted himself
with all their revolutions and motions is fairly considered to have a
soul resembling the soul of that Being who has created those stars in
the heavens: for when Archimedes described in a sphere the motions of
the moon, sun, and five planets, he did the very same thing as Plato's
God, in his Tim