Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
and not only there is nothing better, but we cannot even conceive
anything superior to it; and if reason and wisdom are the greatest of
all perfections, they must necessarily be a part of what we all allow
to be the most excellent.
Who is not compelled to admit the truth of what I assert by that
agreeable, uniform, and continued agreement of things in the universe?
Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be
covered with snow? Or, if such a number of things regulated their own
changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and
winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated? Could the flux
and reflux of the sea and the height of the tides be affected by the
increase or wane of the moon? Could the different courses of the stars
be preserved by the uniform movement of the whole heaven? Could these
things subsist, I say, in such a harmony of all the parts of the
universe without the continued influence of a divine spirit?
If these points are handled in a free and copious manner, as I purpose
to do, they will be less liable to the cavils of the Academics; but the
narrow, confined way in which Zeno reasoned upon them laid them more
open to objection; for as running streams are seldom or never tainted,
while standing waters easily grow corrupt, so a fluency of expression
washes away the censures of the caviller, while the narrow limits of a
discourse which is too concise is almost defenceless; for the arguments
which I am enlarging upon are thus briefly laid down by Zeno:
VIII. "That which reasons is superior to that which does not; nothing
is superior to the world; the world, therefore, reasons." By the same
rule the world may be proved to be wise, happy, and eternal; for the
possession of all these qualities is superior to the want of them; and
nothing is superior to the world; the inevitable consequence of which
argument is, that the world, therefore, is a Deity. He goes on: "No
part of anything void of sense is capable of perception; some parts of
the world have perception; the world, therefore, has sense." He
proceeds, and pursues the argument closely. "Nothing," says he, "that
is destitute itself of life and reason can generate a being possessed
of life and reason; but the world does generate beings possessed of
life and reason; the world, therefore, is not itself destitute of life
and reason."
He concludes his argument in his usual manner with a simile: "If
well-tuned pipes should spring out of the olive, would you have the
slightest doubt that there was in the olive-tree itself some kind of
skill and knowledge? Or if the plane-tree could produce harmonious
lutes, surely you would infer, on the same principle, that music was
contained in the plane-tree. Why, then, should we not believe the world
is a living and wise being, since it produces living and wise beings
out of itself?"
IX. But as I have been insensibly led into a length of discourse beyond
my first design (for I said that, as the existence of the Gods was
evident to all, there was no need of any long oration to prove it), I
will demonstrate it by reasons deduced from the nature of things. For
it is a fact that all beings which take nourishment and increase
contain in themselves a power of natural heat, without which they could
neither be nourished nor increase. For everything which is of a warm
and fiery character is agitated and stirred up by its own motion. But
that which is nourished and grows is influenced by a certain regular
and equable motion. And as long as this motion remains in us, so long
does sense and life remain; but the moment that it abates and is
extinguished, we ourselves decay and perish.
By arguments like these, Cleanthes shows how great is the power of heat
in all bodies. He observes that there is no food so gross as not to be
digested in a night and a day; and that even in the excrementitious
parts, which nature rejects, there remains a heat. The veins and
arteries seem, by their continual quivering, to resemble the agitation
of fire; and it has often been observed when the heart of an animal is
just plucked from the body that it palpitates with such visible motion
as to resemble the rapidity of fire. Everything, therefore, that has
life, whether it be animal or vegetable, owes that life to the heat
inherent in it; it is this nature of heat which contains in itself the
vital power which extends throughout the whole world. This will appear
more clearly on a more close explanation of this fiery quality, which
pervades all things.
Every division, then, of the world (and I shall touch upon the most
considerable) is sustained by heat; and first it may be observed in
earthly substances that fire is produced from stones by striking or
rubbing one against another; that "the warm earth smokes"[121] when
just turned up, and that water is drawn warm from well-springs; and
this is most especially the case in the winter season, because there is
a great quantity of heat contained in the caverns of the earth; and
this becomes more dense in the winter, and on that account confines
more closely the innate heat which is discoverable in the earth.
X. It would require a long dissertation, and many reasons would require
to be adduced, to show that all the seeds which the earth conceives,
and all those which it contains having been generated from itself, and
fixed in roots and trunks, derive all their origin and increase from
the temperature and regulation of heat. And that even every liquor has
a mixture of heat in it is plainly demonstrated by the effusion of
water; for it would not congeal by cold, nor become solid, as ice or
snow, and return again to its natural state, if it were not that, when
heat is applied to it, it again becomes liquefied and dissolved, and so
diffuses itself. Therefore, by northern and other cold winds it is
frozen and hardened, and in turn it dissolves and melts again by heat.
The seas likewise, we find, when agitated by winds, grow warm, so that
from this fact we may understand that there is heat included in that
vast body of water; for we cannot imagine it to be external and
adventitious heat, but such as is stirred up by agitation from the deep
recesses of the seas; and the same thing takes place with respect to
our bodies, which grow warm with motion and exercise.
And the very air itself, which indeed is the coldest element, is by no
means void of heat; for there is a great quantity, arising from the
exhalations of water, which appears to be a sort of steam occasioned by
its internal heat, like that of boiling liquors. The fourth part of the
universe is entirely fire, and is the source of the salutary and vital
heat which is found in the rest. From hence we may conclude that, as
all parts of the world are sustained by heat, the world itself also has
such a great length of time subsisted from the same cause; and so much
the more, because we ought to understand that that hot and fiery
principle is so diffused over universal nature that there is contained
in it a power and cause of generation and procreation, from which all
animate beings, and all those creatures of the vegetable world, the
roots of which are contained in the earth, must inevitably derive their
origin and their increase.
XI. It is nature, consequently, that continues and preserves the world,
and that, too, a nature which is not destitute of sense and reason; for
in every essence that is not simple, but composed of several parts,
there must be some predominant quality--as, for instance, the mind in
man, and in beasts something resembling it, from which arise all the
appetites and desires for anything. As for trees, and all the vegetable
produce of the earth, it is thought to be in their roots. I call that
the predominant quality,[122] which the Greeks call [Greek:
hegemonikon]; which must and ought to be the most excellent quality,
wherever it is found. That, therefore, in which the prevailing quality
of all nature resides must be the most excellent of all things, and
most worthy of the power and pre-eminence over all things.
Now, we see that there is nothing in being that is not a part of the
universe; and as there are sense and reason in the parts of it, there
must therefore be these qualities, and these, too, in a more energetic
and powerful degree, in that part in which the predominant quality of
the world is found. The world, therefore, must necessarily be possessed
of wisdom; and that element, which embraces all things, must excel in
perfection of reason. The world, therefore, is a God, and the whole
power of the world is contained in that divine element.
The heat also of the world is more pure, clear, and lively, and,
consequently, better adapted to move the senses than the heat allotted
to us; and it vivifies and preserves all things within the compass of
our knowledge.
It is absurd, therefore, to say that the world, which is endued with a
perfect, free, pure, spirituous, and active heat, is not sensitive,
since by this heat men and beasts are preserved, and move, and think;
more especially since this heat of the world is itself the sole
principle of agitation, and has no external impulse, but is moved
spontaneously; for what can be more powerful than the world, which
moves and raises that heat by which it subsists?
XII. For let us listen to Plato, who is regarded as a God among
philosophers. He says that there are two sorts of motion, one innate
and the other external; and that that which is moved spontaneously is
more divine than that which is moved by another power. This self-motion
he places in the mind alone, and concludes that the first principle of
motion is derived from the mind. Therefore, since all motion arises
from the heat of the world, and that heat is not moved by the effect of
any external impulse, but of its own accord, it must necessarily be a
mind; from whence it follows that the world is animated.
On such reasoning is founded this opinion, that the world is possessed
of understanding, because it certainly has more perfections in itself
than any other nature; for as there is no part of our bodies so
considerable as the whole of us, so it is clear that there is no
particular portion of the universe equal in magnitude to the whole of
it; from whence it follows that wisdom must be an attribute of the
world; otherwise man, who is a part of it, and possessed of reason,
would be superior to the entire world.
And thus, if we proceed from the first rude, unfinished natures to the
most superior and perfect ones, we shall inevitably come at last to the
nature of the Gods. For, in the first place, we observe that those
vegetables which are produced out of the earth are supported by nature,
and she gives them no further supply than is sufficient to preserve
them by nourishing them and making them grow. To beasts she has given
sense and motion, and a faculty which directs them to what is
wholesome, and prompts them to shun what is noxious to them. On man she
has conferred a greater portion of her favor; inasmuch as she has added
reason, by which he is enabled to command his passions, to moderate
some, and to subdue others.
XIII. In the fourth and highest degree are those beings which are
naturally wise and good, who from the first moment of their existence
are possessed of right and consistent reason, which we must consider
superior to man and deserving to be attributed to a God; that is to
say, to the world, in which it is inevitable that that perfect and
complete reason should be inherent. Nor is it possible that it should
be said with justice that there is any arrangement of things in which
there cannot be something entire and perfect. For as in a vine or in
beasts we see that nature, if not prevented by some superior violence,