Commentary on the First and Second Chapters of the Thirtieth Book of the Natural History of Gaius Plinius Secundus

And they said that Gods were divine virtues diffused through things, for which reason they also called them souls, and they committed to memory that virtues depend from them: Because it belongs to the soul alone to extend from one matter into things, around which it itself operates: just as a man extends his intellect to intelligible things and imagination to imaginable things. This is what they asserted, that the soul of one Entity goes out and enters into another, and hastens, excites, impels, and impedes it, impedes, I say, its own operations: just as the Diamond is an impediment to the Magnet stone, so that it may not attract iron. But when the soul itself, as they themselves assert, is the first mobile, spontaneous, I say, and mobile by itself. But the body or matter is ineffective for motion by itself, and degenerates far from the soul itself; therefore, they claim that the body is an excellent kind of medium, namely, as if it were not a medium of the body, but as if it were soul, and as if it were not soul, but as if it were already body, by which the soul is connected and likewise to which it is joined. They say that the medium of things is the spirit of the world, which most philosophers call the Fifth essence: fifth, because it is not from the four elements, but a certain fifth [thing], existing beyond them: for they claim such a spirit is necessarily required, as a medium by which celestial souls are present to the coarser body, and then bestow brilliant gifts upon natural things. This spirit is indeed such, almost, as they say, as our own spirit in the human body. For just as (as the Magi wish) the forces of our souls are applied through our spirit to our members: so the virtue of the soul of the world is dilated through the Fifth essence through all things. For nothing can be found that lacks some virtue: yet more virtue is infused into those that have the most spirit, and have drunk the most of it: for it is drunk through the rays of the stars, insofar as things have rendered themselves conformable to them. Through this spirit, therefore, every occult property is propagated, and it mixes itself with herbs, metals, stones, and plants. Thus, these things being compared, it is certain that abstruse and occult forces are inherent in natural things: not indeed from elemental nature, but implanted in our senses from heaven. It must be further gathered here