Book II, Chap. LV. Of the soul of the World, and of the Celestials, according to the traditions of the Poets, and Philosophers.

p. 327

IT is necessary that the heaven and Celestial bodies, seeing they have a power, influence, and manifest operation upon these inferiors, should be animated: seeing an operation cannot proceed from a meer body. All famous Poets, and Philosophers affirm therefore that the world and all Celestiall bodies must have a soul, and that also intelligent: Hence Marcus Mavillius in his Astronomy to Augustus, sings,
The great Corporeall world, which doth appear
In divers forms, of Aire, Earth, Sea, and Fire,
A divine soul doth rule, a Diety
Doth wisely govern—
Also Lucan,
The Earth that's weigh'd i'th aire, 's sustained
By great Jove—
And Boetius
Thou dost joyn to the world a soul, that moves
All things of threefold nature, and diffuse
It through the members of the same, and this
Into two Orbs of motion rounded is
Being divided, and for to return
Into it self makes haste—
And Virgil most full of all Philosophy, sings thus,
And first the Heaven, Earth, and liquid plain,
The Moons bright Globe, and Stars Titanian
A spirit fed within, spread through the whole
And with the huge heap mix'd infused a soul;
Hence man, and beasts, and birds derive their strain,
And monsters floating in the marbled main;
These seeds have fiery vigor, and a birth
Of heavenly race, but clog'd with heavy earth.
For what do these verses seem to mean, then that the world should not only have a spirit soul, but also to partake of the divine mind: and that the originall, vertue, and vigour of all inferiour things do depend on the soul of the world? This do all Platonists, Pythagorians, Orpheus, Trismegistus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Avicen, Algazeles, and all Peripateticks confess, and confirm.