ir PLURALITY AND PERFECTION 199 



embraces all number or plurality in itself. " We are 

 not compelled to define a number, we who say that 

 there is an infinite number of worlds ; there no distinc- 

 tion exists of odd or even, since these are differences of 

 number, not of the innumerable. Nor can I think 

 there have ever been philosophers who, in positing 

 several worlds, did not posit them also as infinite : for 

 would not reason, which demands something further 

 beyond this sensible world, so also outside of and 

 beyond whatever number of worlds is assumed, assume 

 again another and another ? " l 



That there are more worlds than one is due to the One life in 

 presence everywhere throughout space of the same worlds. 

 principle of life, which everywhere has the same effect ; 

 just as within one of these worlds, the earth, we find 

 different species of the same animal of man, for 

 example which cannot be descended from the same 

 parentage. There are " men of different colours, cave- 

 men, mountain-pygmies, the guardians of minerals, the 

 giants of the South/' each of which races must have 

 been produced independently in its own place. And 

 finally, although it is true that nothing can be added to 

 the perfect, why may not the perfect be multiplicable ? 

 Though the perfect man is one, nature may produce 

 several within the same species. " Everywhere is one 

 soul, one spirit of the world, wholly in the whole and 

 in every part of it, as we find in our lesser world also. 

 This soul . . . (should the kind of place and of 

 element not conflict) produces all things everywhere ; 

 so that for the generation of some even time is not 

 required. . . . The infinite universe, and it only under 

 God, is perfect. Nothing finite is so good that it 

 could not be better ; whatever may be better has some 



1 Op. Ldt. i. 2. p. 274. 



