ions, and are carried along in fixed and definite courses. It is surely
wonderful, why the globe of the earth alone with its emanations is
condemned by him and his followers and cast into exile (as senseless and
lifeless), and driven out of all the perfection of the excellent universe.
It is treated as a small corpuscle in comparison with the whole, and in the
numerous concourse of many thousands it is obscure, disregarded, and
unhonoured. {209} With it also they connect the kindred elements, in a like
unhappiness, wretched and neglected. Let this therefore be looked upon as a
monstrosity in the Aristotelian universe, in which everything is perfect,
vigorous, animated; whilst the earth alone, an unhappy portion, is paltry,
imperfect, dead, inanimate, and decadent. But on the other hand Hermes,
Zoroaster, Orpheus, recognize a universal life. We, however, consider that
the whole universe is animated, and that all the globes, all the stars, and
also the noble earth have been governed since the beginning by their own
appointed souls and have the motives of self-conservation. Nor are there
wanting, either implanted in their homogenic nature or scattered through
their homogenic substance, organs suitable for organic activity, although
these are not fashioned of flesh and blood as animals, or composed of
regular limbs, which are also hardly perceptible in certain plants and
vegetables; since regular limbs are not necessary for all life. Nor can any
organs be discerned or imagined by us in any of the stars, the sun, or the
planets, which are specially operative in the universe; yet they live and
imbue with life the small particles in the prominences on the earth. If
there be anything of which men can boast, it is in fact life, intelligence;
for the other animals are ennobled by life; God also (by whose nod all
things are ruled) is a living soul. Who therefore will demand organs for
the divine intelligences, which rise superior to every combination of
organs and are not restrained by materialized organs? But in the several
bodies of the stars the implanted force acts otherwise than in those divine
existences which are supernaturally ordained; and in the stars, the sources
of things, otherwise than in animals; in animals again otherwise than in
plants. Miserable were the condition of the stars, abject the lot of the
earth, if that wonderful dignity of life be denied to them, which is
conceded to worms, ants, moths, plants, and toadst