aliment
which nourishes and maintains the stars.

Now, as we are usually incited to all sorts of desires by the stimulus of
the body, and the more so, as we endeavour to rival those who are in
possession of what we long for, we shall certainly be happy when, being
emancipated from that body, we at the same time get rid of these desires
and this rivalry: and, that which we do at present, when, dismissing all
other cares, we curiously examine and look into anything, we shall then do
with greater freedom; and we shall employ ourselves entirely in the
contemplation and examination of things; because there is naturally in our
minds a certain insatiable desire to know the truth; and the very region
itself where we shall arrive, as it gives us a more intuitive and easy
knowledge of celestial things, will raise our desires after knowledge. For
it was this beauty of the heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which
gave birth to that national and hereditary philosophy, (as Theophrastus
calls it,) which was thus excited to a desire of knowledge. But those
persons will in a most especial degree enjoy this philosophy, who, while
they were only inhabitants of this world and enveloped in darkness, were
still desirous of looking into these things with the eye of their mind.

XX. For, if those men now think that they have attained something who have
seen the mouth of the Pontus, and those straits which were passed by the
ship called Argo, because,

From Argos she did chosen men convey,
Bound to fetch back the golden fleece, their prey;

or those who have seen the straits of the ocean,

Where the swift waves divide the neighbouring shores
Of Europe, and of Afric.

What kind of sight do you imagine that will be, when the whole earth is
laid open to our view? and that, too, not only in its position, form, and
boundaries, nor those parts of it only which are habitable, but those also
that lie uncultivated, through the extremities of heat and cold to which
they are exposed; for not even now is it with our eyes that we view what
we see, for the body itself has no senses; but (as the naturalists, aye,
and even the physicians assure us, who have opened our bodies, and
examined them), there are certain perforated channels from the seat of the
soul to the eyes, ears, and nose; so that frequently, when either
prevented by meditation, or the force of some bodily disorder, we neither
hear nor see, though our eyes and ea