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

BOOK I. xiv. 5-10same much more tree of oar own souls ? But if oursouls are so bound up with God and joined togetherwith Him, as being parts and portions of His being,does not God perceive their every motion as beinga motion of that which is His own and of onebody with Himself? And yet you have power tothink about the divine dispensation and about eachseveral item among things divine, and at the sametime also about human affairs, and you have thefaculty of being moved by myriads of matters at thesame time both in your senses and in your intelligence,and at the same time you assent to some,while you dissent from others, or suspend judgementabout them ;and you guard in your own soul somany impressions derived from so many and variousmatters,, and,, on being moved by these impressions,your mind falls upon notions corresponding to theimpressions first made, and so from myriads of mattersyou derive and retain arts, one after the other, andmemories. All this you do, and is God not ableto oversee all things and to be present with alland to have a certain communication from them all ?Yet the sun iscapable of illuminating so large aportion of the universe, and of leaving unilluminatedonly the small space which is no larger than canbe covered by the shadow that the earth casts and;is He who has created the sun, which is but a smallportion of Himself 1 in comparison with the whole,and causes it to revolve, is He not able to perceiveall things ?1Chryaippus identified the Universe, of which the sunis but a part, with God. See Cicero, De, Natura Deorum,ii. 38 f.103