ere any being out of its compass to whose power
it might be obnoxious. But to Plato it may be thus returned. First, that
the world is not complete and perfect, nor doth it contain all things
within itself. And if man is a perfect being, yet he doth not encompass
all things. Secondly, that there are many exemplars and originals of
statues, houses, and pictures. Thirdly, how is the world perfect, if
anything beyond it is possible to be moved about it? But the world
is not incorruptible, nor can it be so conceived, because it had an
original.

To Metrodorus it seems absurd, that in a large field one only stalk
should grow, and in an infinite space one only world exist; and that
this universe is infinite is manifest by this, that there is an infinity
of causes. Now if this world be finite and the causes producing it
infinite, it follows that the worlds likewise be infinite; for where
all causes concur, there the effects also must appear, let the causes be
what they will, either atoms or elements.

CHAPTER VI. WHENCE DID MEN OBTAIN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE AND
ESSENCE OF A DEITY?

The Stoics thus define the essence of a god. It is a spirit intellectual
and fiery, which acknowledges no shape, but is continually changed into
what it pleases, and assimilates itself to all things. The knowledge
of this deity they first received from the pulchritude of those things
which so visibly appeared to us; for they concluded that nothing
beauteous could casually or fortuitously be formed, but that it was
framed from the art of a great understanding that produced the world.
That the world is very resplendent is made perspicuous from the figure,
the color, the magnitude of it, and likewise from the wonderful variety
of those stars which adorn this world. The world is spherical; the
orbicular hath the pre-eminence above all other figures, for being round
itself it hath its parts like itself. (On this account, according to
Plato, the understanding, which is the most sacred part of man, is in
the head.) The color of it is most beauteous; for it is painted with
blue; which, though little blacker than purple, yet hath such a shining
quality, that by reason of the vehement efficacy of its color it cuts
through such a space of air; whence it is that at so great a distance
the heavens are to be contemplated. And in this very greatness of the
world the beauty of it appears. View all things: that which contains the
rest carries a beauty