1. Nothing will be explained by the perfectly true (Stoic) statement
that the world, as corporeal being that ever existed and that will ever
exist, is indebted for the cause of its perpetuity to the volition
of the divinity. We might find an analogy between the change of the
elements, and the death of animals without the perishing of the form of
the species here below, and the universe above, whose body is subject
to a perpetual flux and flow. Thus the divine volition could preserve
for it the same specific form in spite of successive alterations, so
that, without perpetually retaining numerical unity, it would ever
preserve the specific unity of form. It would indeed be a remarkable
discrepancy in the methods of nature that here below in animals the
form alone should be perpetual, while in the heaven and the stars their
individuality should be considered as perpetual as their form.