ools; for thus worms,
moths, grubs would be bodies more honoured and perfect in nature; for
without life no body is excellent, valuable, or distinguished. But since
living bodies arise and receive life from the earth and the sun, and grass
grows on the earth apart from any seeds thrown down (as when soil is dug up
from deep down in the earth, and put on some very high place or on a very
high tower, in a sunny spot, not so long after various grasses spring up
unbidden) it is not likely that they can produce what is not in them; but
they awaken life, and therefore they are living. Therefore the bodies of
the globes, as important parts of the universe, in order that they might be
independent and that they might continue in that condition, had a need for
souls to be united with them, without which there can be neither life, nor
primary activity, nor motion, nor coalition, nor controlling power, nor
harmony, nor endeavour, nor sympathy; and without which there would be no
generation {210} of anything, no alternations of the seasons, no
propagation; but all things would be carried this way and that, and the
whole universe would fall into wretchedest Chaos, the earth in short would
be vacant, dead, and useless. But it is only on the superficies of the
globes that the concourse of living and animated beings is clearly
perceived, in the great and pleasing variety of which the great
master-workman is well pleased. But those souls which are restrained within
a kind of barrier and in prison cells, as it were, do not emit immaterial
effused forms outside the limits of their bodies; and bodies are not moved
by them without labour and waste. They are brought and carried away by a
breath; and when this has calmed down or been suppressed by some untoward
influence, their bodies lie like the dregs of the universe and as the
refuse of the globes. But the globes themselves remain and continue from
year to year, move, and advance, and complete their courses, without waste
or weariness. The human soul uses reason, sees many things, inquires about
many more; but even the best instructed receives by his external senses (as
through a lattice) light and the beginnings of knowledge. Hence come so
many errors and follies, by which our judgments and the actions of our
lives are perverted; so that few or none order their actions rightly and
justly. But the magnetick force of the earth and the formate life or living
form of the globes, without perceptio