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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 XI.

Of Causes.

A cause is that by which anything is produced, or by which anything is effected.

Plato gives this triple division of causes - the material, the efficient, and the final cause; the principal cause he judges to be the efficient, which is the mind and intellect.

Pythagoras and Aristotle judge the first causes are incorporeal beings, but those that are causes by accident or participation become corporeal substances; by this means the world is corporeal.

The Stoics grant that all causes are corporeal, inasmuch as they are physical.