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Sentiments concerning nature with which philosophers were delighted

Table of Contents

Book I.

It being our determination to discourse of Natural Philosophy, we judge it necessary, in the first place and chiefly, to divide the body of philosophy

Chapter XXVIII.

Book II.

Having finished my dissertation concerning principles and elements and those things which chiefly appertain to them, I will turn my pen to discourse o

Chapter XXVIII.

Book III.

In my two precedent treatises having in due order taken a compendious view and given an account of the celestial bodies, and of the moon which stands

Book IV.

Having taken a survey of the general parts of the world, I will take a view of the particular members of it.

Book V

Chapter XXVIII.

Chapter I.

Of Divination.

Plato and the Stoics introduce divination as a godlike enthusiasm, the soul itself being of a divine constitution, and this prophetic faculty being inspiration, or an illapse of the divine knowledge into man; and so likewise they account for interpretation by dreams. And these same allow many divisions of the art of divination. Xenophanes and Epicurus utterly refuse any such art of foretelling future contingencies. Pythagoras rejects all manner of divination which is by sacrifices. Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only these two kinds of it, a fury by a divine inspiration, and dreams; they deny the immortality of the soul, yet they affirm that the mind of man hath a participation of something that is divine.