CHAPTER I.

ON THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE PRESENT AGE: and on the most common notion of all future vicissitude; through those things which now appear as critical signs of a laboring world.

A decorative drop cap M begins the text.
No one who has tasted even from the threshold the sources of ancient theology is ignorant that the structure of the world is like some animal, aptly composed from its own soul, its own spirit, and its bodily limbs, according to the divine opinion of Plato. But as to how much may be attributed to the principles of that doctrine without offense to the Christian religion, it has been demonstrated by us elsewhere and quite clearly when we were treating of the whole class of characterizations. From which finally we concluded by reason that whatever is accustomed to happen in animals, either regarding the distribution and consensus of parts or the variety of action and passion, the same is depicted in the vast circuit of the outer world, in the heavens, in the earth, and in the individual parts of the universe by the primary maker himself in the manner of an exemplar: the vicissitudes of disease and health, the causes and signs, and the method of curing, and the indicative goals in both genres agree everywhere even to the smallest detail.

On the mutual conspiracy of individual parts in the universe.

The medicine of bodies is the same as the cure of a laboring Republic.