Philosophers agree on one divine mind

Listen also to the poets, who proclaim one father of gods and of humans, and say that the mind of mortals is such as the parent of all things has brought the day. What about Vergil of Mantua? Does he not say, more openly, more closely, more truly, at the beginning: 'A spirit within nourishes heaven and earth and the other members of the world, and an infused mind stirs them; from this comes the race of humans and beasts and whatever other living things there are'? Elsewhere he calls that mind and spirit God. These are his words: 'For God passes through all lands and the stretches of the sea and the deep sky; from him come humans and beasts, from him rain and fires.' What else do we proclaim God to be than mind and reason and spirit?

Let us review, if you please, the teaching of the philosophers: you will find that, although their words vary, they nevertheless come together and agree into this one opinion in the things themselves. I pass over those rough and ancient thinkers who earned the name of wise men from their sayings. Let Thales of Miletus be first of all, since he was the first of all to discuss heavenly matters. This Thales of Miletus said that the beginning of things was water, but that God was the mind which formed all things from water: [a later gloss adds: the account of water and spirit is too lofty and sublime for a human being to have found it; it was handed down by God]. You see that the opinion of the first philosopher agrees deeply with ours.

Anaximenes next, and after him Diogenes of Apollonia, establish air as God, infinite and immeasurable: their agreement about divinity is similar as well. Anaxagoras's description and motion of an infinite mind is called God, and Pythagoras's God is a soul passing through and intent upon the whole nature of things, from which the life of all living things is taken. It is well known that Xenophanes handed down that God is everything infinite with mind, and that Antisthenes knew many popular gods but one natural God as chief, and that Speusippus knew God as a natural living force by which all things are governed.

What of Democritus? Although he was the first inventor of atoms, does he not often speak of nature, which pours out images, and intelligence as God? Straton too—does he not also call nature God? Even that Epicurus, who imagines gods either idle or nonexistent, nevertheless places nature above them. Aristotle varies, yet he assigns one power: for sometimes he calls mind God, sometimes the world, sometimes he places God over the world. Heraclides of Pontus also ascribes a divine mind to God, though in varying ways.

Theophrastus also varies, at one time giving the chief place to the world, at another to the divine mind. Zeno and Chrysippus and Cleanthes are themselves also of many forms, but they all return to the unity of providence. Cleanthes discussed God as mind, sometimes as soul, sometimes as aether, and most often as reason. Zeno, his teacher, wants natural and divine law, and aether, and sometimes reason, to be the beginning of all things; by interpreting Juno as air, Jupiter as heaven, Neptune as sea, Vulcan as fire, and by showing that the other gods of the crowd are similarly elements, he gravely argues against and refutes the public error.

Chrysippus holds almost the same view: he believes God to be divine force, rational nature, sometimes the world, and sometimes fatal necessity, and he imitates Zeno in the physiological interpretation of the poems of Hesiod, Homer, and Orpheus. Diogenes of Babylon also has a method of explaining and arguing that the birth of Jupiter and the origin of Minerva and other things of this kind are names of things, not of gods. For Xenophon the Socratic denies that the form of the true God can be seen and therefore says he should not be sought; Aristo the Stoic says he cannot be comprehended at all: both of them perceived the majesty of God through the despair of understanding him.

Plato's speech about God is more open, both in the things themselves and in the names, and it would be entirely heavenly if it were not sometimes soiled by the admixture of civic persuasion. In the Timaeus, then, Plato says that God is by his very name the parent of the world, the artisan of the soul, the maker of heavenly and earthly things, and he says beforehand that it is difficult to find him because of his excessive and incredible power, and that when you have found him, it is impossible to speak of him in public. These things are almost the same as ours: for we know God and call him the parent of all things, and we never proclaim him publicly unless we are asked.