OPINIONS OF CICERO. 481 



all-pervading fire as the animating principle, or 

 soul of nature ; but that it was governed by the 

 eternal laws of an immutable necessity, which 

 they termed Fate, or Jupiter ; and that the mind 

 of man is a spark of the same setherial principle 

 that as the loss of heat is always attended with 

 the extinction of life, sensation, and thought, it 

 must be a spirit or mind. Cicero adds, " Quo- 

 niam ex mundi ardore motus omnis oritur, autem 

 ardor non alieno impulsu sed sua sponte, animus 

 sit necesse est." (De Natura Deorum, lib. ii. 

 c. 12.) 



And when summing up the opinions of the 

 most distinguished philosophers of Greece, he 

 observes, that " whatever the nature of the Divi- 

 nity may be, whether air, fire, or the fifth element 

 of Aristotle, the human soul is a portion of the 

 same divine nature, that every one is conscious 

 of having within him a something capable of self- 

 motion and that a principle possessing such a 

 power must be the fountain of motion to every 

 thing else, therefore immortal, according to the 

 reasoning of Socrates and Plato. Hence the 

 swiftness of thought, the powers of memory, the 

 pleasures of heroic virtue ; the joy with which 

 we contemplate the boundless extent of the starry 

 heavens, the earth, and sea ; and the delight with 

 which the soul traces its connexion with the 

 Eternal Reason from which all causes proceed." 

 (Tus. Disp. lib. i. c. 23.) 



