Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/356

 could be made, it is certainly endowed with not only life, sense, and reason, but also understanding. For the perfection of a body is its soul, and that body is more perfect which hath a more perfect soul; It is necessary therefore, seeing Celestiall bodies are more perfect, that they have also most perfect minds. They partake therefore of an intellect and a minde; which the Platonists also prove by the perseverance of their order, and tenor, because motion is of its nature free, it may easily swarve, and wander now one way, now another, unless it were ruled by an intellect and a mind, and that also by a perfect mind foreseeing from the beginning the best way, and chief end. Which perfect mind indeed, becaue it is most powerfull in the soul, as is the soul, and as are the souls of Celestiall bodies, and of Elements, without all doubt doth most orderly, and perfectly govern the work allotted to it. For bodies do not resist a most powerfull soul, and a perfect mind doth not change its counsel. The soul of the world therefore is a certain only thing, filling all things, bestowing all things, binding, and knitting together all things, that it might make one frame of the world, and that it might be as it were one instrument making of many strings, but one sound, sounding from three kinds of creatures, intellectall, Celestiall, and incorruptible, with one only breath and life.

Chap. lviii. Of the names of the Celestials, and their rule over this inferiour world, viz. Man. The names of Celestiall souls are very many, and diverse according to their manifold power and vertue upon these inferior things, from whence they have received divers names, which the ancients in their hymnes and prayer made use of. Concerning which you must observe, that every one of these souls according to Orpheus's Divinity, is said to have a