those men are, ashamed in
cases where I am ignorant, to own that I am so. If in any other obscure
matter I were able to assert anything positively, then I would swear that
the soul, be it air or fire, is divine. Just think, I beseech you,--can you
imagine this wonderful power of memory to be sown in, or to be a part of
the composition of the earth, or of this dark and gloomy atmosphere?
Though you cannot apprehend what it is, yet you see what kind of thing it
is, or if you do not quite see that, yet you certainly see how great it
is. What then? shall we imagine that there is a kind of measure in the
soul, into which, as into a vessel, all that we remember is poured? that
indeed is absurd; for how shall we form any idea of the bottom, or of the
shape or fashion of such a soul as that? and again how are we to conceive
how much it is able to contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive
impressions like wax, and memory to be marks of the impressions made on
the soul? What are the characters of the words, what of the facts
themselves? and what again is that prodigious greatness which can give
rise to impressions of so many things? What, lastly, is that power which
investigates secret things, and is called invention and contrivance? Does
that man seem to be compounded of this earthly, mortal, and perishing
nature, who first invented names for everything, which, if you will
believe Pythagoras, is the highest pitch of wisdom? or he, who collected
the dispersed inhabitants of the world, and united them, in the bonds of
social life? or he, who confined the sounds of the voice, which used to
seem infinite, to the marks of a few letters? or he who first observed the
courses of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws? These were
all great men; but they were greater still, who invented food, and
raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization amongst us, and armed us
against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and
so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments. For we
have provided great entertainments for the ears, by inventing and
modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learnt to survey the
stars, not only those that are fixed, but also those which are improperly
called wandering; and the man who has acquainted himself with all their
revolutions and motions, is fairly considered to have a soul resembling
the soul of that Being who has created those stars in the heaven