ence 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