Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

300 THtt FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMresult of reasoning and discussion, but likewise acceptedit on the authority of the highest philosophers. Pythagorasand his school had never doubted that our mindsare drops of the universal divine Mind. The humanspirit having been severed off from the divine Mindcan be compared with nothing else, if this may bereverentially spoken, but with God Himself. Elsewherehe affirms that " there is one infinite natureand power of mind, separate from these natures usualand known to us. And so, whatever that is whichfeels, which understands, which wills, which energises,it is heavenly and divine, and therefore must beeternal. Nor, indeed, can God Himself, who is conceivedby us, be otherwise conceived than as Mind,pure and free, distinct and apart from all mortalcomposition, feeling and moving all things, and itselfendowed with eternal motion. Of this kind and ofthe same nature is the human mind." The view iscompleted by the parallel between the soul in the bodyand God in the world, which he puts in the mouthof the elder Scipio, addressing the younger with asort of revelation from the supernal region in whichhis soul as a part of the universal soul was dwelling." Know then thyself to be God, if, indeed, He is Godwho energises, feels, remembers, provides: who asmuch rules and directs and moves that body overwhich he presides as the supreme God does withregard to this universe. And as God, who is Himselfeternal, moves the universe which is in one part of itsubject to death, so the everlasting mind moves a corruptiblebody."Cicero l may be said to be here expressing the out-1 Cicero, De Senectute, 21 ; Tusc. Disp. v. 13, i. 27. SomniumScipionis from De Republica.