First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

§. XIX.

Let us not, however, pass over the fact that, according to the STOICS, the World Soul is connected to the world by a certain eternal bond. For they made the world, which embraced God and Matter as the first principles of all things, eternal, as much regarding the limit from the time before as the limit from the time after, as metaphysicians love to propose the matter; or, which is clearer, in relation to the past as well as the future. (*) Presupposing this opinion as true, I would not allow my finite intellect to inquire into something infinite, but would willingly abstain from the investigation of this bond.

() Generally, that the eternity of the World is a dogma of the STOICS, CICERO deduced from that ZENOian tenet where he determines: "Nothing is better than the world." From this it can be brought about that "the world is wise, blessed, and likewise eternal: for all these things are better than those which lack them; but nothing is better than the World." See CICERO, On the Nature of the Gods, Book II, 21, Vol. IV, Works, page 300 D. In particular, however, as it pertains to the limit from the time before regarding the ceasing of the world's existence, the same Prince of Roman eloquence, when he had assigned the role of the Stoics to BALBUS, introduces him affirming: "The world has existed in the eternal space of past time," l.c., Book II. And, if we look at the limit from the time after, although they established that the diakosmesis ordered nature, or formed Nature, would pass away at fixed times into infinity, and would be consumed by conflagration; yet they taught that the kosmos world/order, or the complex of God and matter, would remain forever, and that the World Soul would never be separated from it. To this opinion I bring the passage of CHRYSIPPUS in PLUTARCH, On Stoic Repugnances, Works, Vol. II, page 1051 C. (Frankfurt Edition, 1620.) "Since death is the separation of the soul from the body, but the soul of the world is not indeed separated from it, but grows continuously until it consumes matter into itself, it is not to be said that the world dies." Compare JAC. THOMASIUS, Dissertations on Exercises on the Stoic Conflagration of the World, XVI, On the Stoic Eternity of the World, pages 233–236.*