Volume 1 - Discourses - Books I - II - College of Stoic Philosophers

BOOK I. xiii. 5-xiv. 5the earth., that it is to the pit, that it is to thesewretched laws of ours, the laws of the dead, andthat it is not to the laws of the gods that you look ?CHAPTER XIVThat the Deity oversees all menNow when someone asked him how a man couldbe convinced that each thing which he does is underthe eye of God, Do you not think,, he answered.,that all things are united in one? I do., said theother. Very well, do you not think that what ison earth feels the influence * of that w r hich is inheaven ? I do, he replied. For how else comesit that so regularly, as if from God's command., whenHe bids the plants flower., they flower,, when Hebids them put forth shoots, they put them forth,when He bids them bear their fruit, they bear it,when to ripen, they ripen ;when again He bidsthem drop their fruit and let fall their leaves andgather themselves together and remain quiet andtake their rest, they remain quiet and take theirrest ?And how else comes it that at the waxing andwaning of the moon and at the approach andrecession of the sun we see among the things thatare on earth so great an alteration and change to theopposite ? But are the plants and our own bodies soclosely bound up with the universe, and do theyso intimately share its affections, 1 and is not thesympathetic magic. For the literature on this topic seePease on Cicero's De Divinations, ii. 34, where crt/,u7ra#ia isdefined by Cicero as a coniunctio naturae et quasi concensus etconsensus.% 10 1