The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

a traduction of all men from one man, and traduction causes likeness, then every man must be like the first, and (consequently) every other. (Tertullian, De Anima.) ↩

Unde, oro te, similitudine animæ quoque parentibus de ingeniis respondemus,⁠ ⁠… si non ex animæ femine educimur? “Whence is it, I beseech you, says the same author, that we are so like our parents in the dispositions of our minds,⁠ ⁠… if we be not produced from the seed of the soul?” Then to confirm this, he argues like a father indeed, thus; in illo ipso voluptatis ultimo æstu quo genitale virus expellitur, nonne aliquid de anima quoque sentimus exire?: “Do we not in the act of generation perceive some part of our very souls to go out of us?” I am ashamed to transcribe more. (Tertullian, De Anima.) ↩

Therefore the said father makes the soul to be corporeal. ↩

This might seem to be favored by them who hold that all souls were created in the beginning (an opinion mentioned by Isaac Abravanel in Nahalot Abot, et al., often), did not the same authors derive the body מטפה סרוחה, “from a small seed,” as may be seen in Abot, et passim. Particularly Rabbi David Kimhi says of man, נופו נברא מטיפת הזרע אשר תהפך לדם, ומשם יגדל מעט מעט עד שישתלמו איבריו: “That his body is produced out of a small seed, which is first converted into blood, and then increases by degrees, till all the members of it are complete.” ↩

This account destroys that argument, upon which Censorinus says many of the old philosophers asserted the eternity of the world: quod negent omnino posse reperiri, avesne ante, an ova generata sint; cùm et ovum sine ave, et avis sine ovo gigni non possit: “Because they denied the possibility of finding out which is first generated, the birds or the eggs; because an egg cannot be produced without a bird, nor a bird without an egg.” (De Die Natali.) This question was once much agitated in the world, as may be seen by Macrobius and Plutarch, who calls it, τὸ ἄπορον καὶ πολλὰ πράγματα τοῖς ζητητικοῖς παρέχον⁠ ⁠… πρόβλημα: “a problem that cannot be solved, and which put the curious to great difficulties.” (Moralia.) ↩

This is as much as Epicurus had to say for his atoms, for they were only σώματα λόγῳ θεωρητά, κ.τ.λ.: “imaginary bodies.” (Justin Martyr.) ↩

Οὐ γὰρ τῷ θεωρουμένῳ τὸ θεωρεῖν: “For the thing which is speculated upon, cannot speculate.” (Plotinus, Enneads.) ↩

Si nulla fuit genitalis origo terrai et cœli⁠ ⁠… Cur supra bellum Thebanum et funera Trojæ Non alias alii quoque res cecinere poctæ?: “If the earth and the heavens never had any beginning,⁠ ⁠… how comes it to pass that the poets never celebrated any other matters before the wars of Thebes and the destruction of Troy?” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura.) ↩

Πολλαὶ καὶ κατὰ πολλὰ φθοραὶ γεγόνασιν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ἔσονται, πυρὶ μὲν καὶ ὕδατι μέγισται: “There has been great destruction made of mankind, many times and in many places, and will be so again; the greatest of them have been by fire and water.” (Plato, Timaeus.) ↩

Τοὺς ἀγραμμάτους καὶ ἀμούσους: “Such as could not tell their letters, or distinguish one sound from another,” as Plato speaks. (Timaeus.) ↩

For what has been said only in general, and presumptively, to serve a cause, signifies nothing: no more than that testimony in Arnobius, where he seems to allow that there have been universal conflagrations. Quando mundus incensus in favillas et cineres dissolutus est? Non ante nos? “When, says he, was the world so burned as to be reduced to dust and ashes? Has it not been so formerly?” (Adversus Nationes.) ↩

Propositions V and VI. ↩

If that, in Terence, had been (not a question, as it is in The Eunuch, but) an affirmation, Ego homuncio hoc non facerem, “I, poor mortal, would not have done such a thing,” what a bitter reflection had it been upon the heathen deity? ↩

Λέγομεν ὃ μή ἐστιν᾿ ὃ δέ ἐστιν, οὐ λέγομεν: “We affirm what He is not, but we do not affirm what He is.” (Plotinus, Enneads.) ↩

אין דרך להשיגו אלא ממעשיו: “There is no way to know what sort of being He is, but by his works.” (Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed III, 17.) ↩

Ungoverned. (Editor’s note.) ↩

מקרני ראמים עד ביצי כנים: “From the horns of the unicorns to the feet of the lice,” as the Jews speak. (The Guide for the Perplexed.) ↩

I shall not pretend here to meddle with particular cases relating to inanimate or irrational beings, such as are mentioned in The Guide for the Perplexed (a leaf’s falling from a tree, a spider’s catching a fly, etc.) and which are there said to be במקרה גמור, “by mere accident.” Though it is hard to separate these, many times, from the cases of rational beings; as also to comprehend what מקרה גמור, “perfect accident,” is. ↩

Hermaphroditic. (Editor’s note.) ↩

Pliny in his chapter De ordine naturæ in satis, etc., “concerning the course and order of nature in the growth of corn, etc.” treats of trees in terms taken from animals. (Natural History.) ↩

Therefore