Do we not also plainly see
this, that all the most elevated regions are the best, and that the
earth is the lowest region, and is surrounded with the grossest air? so
that as we perceive that in some cities and countries the capacities of
men are naturally duller, from the thickness of the climate, so mankind
in general are affected by the heaviness of the air which surrounds the
earth, the grossest region of the world.

Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the
existence of some intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than
ourselves; for, as Socrates says in Xenophon, from whence had man his
portion of understanding? And, indeed, if any one were to push his
inquiries about the moisture and heat which is diffused through the
human body, and the earthy kind of solidity existing in our entrails,
and that soul by which we breathe, and to ask whence we derived them,
it would be plain that we have received one thing from the earth,
another from liquid, another from fire, and another from that air which
we inhale every time that we breathe.

VII. But where did we find that which excels all these things--I mean
reason, or (if you please, in other terms) the mind, understanding,
thought, prudence; and from whence did we receive it? Shall the world
be possessed of every other perfection, and be destitute of this one,
which is the most important and valuable of all? But certainly there is
nothing better, or more excellent, or more beautiful than the world;
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 influ