That, then, is its natural seat where it has penetrated to something like itself, and where, wanting nothing further, it may be supported and maintained by the same aliment which nourishes and maintains the stars.
Now, as we are usually incited to all sorts of desires by the stimulus of the body, and the more so as we endeavor to rival those who are in possession of what we long for, we shall certainly be happy when, being emancipated from that body, we at the same time get rid of these desires and this rivalry. And that which we do at present, when, dismissing all other cares, we curiously examine and look into anything, we shall then do with greater freedom; and we shall employ ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things; because there is naturally in our minds a certain insatiable desire to know the truth, and the very region itself where we shall arrive, as it gives us a more intuitive and easy knowledge of celestial things, will raise our desires after knowledge.
For it was this beauty of the heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which gave birth to that national and hereditary philosophy (as Theophrastus calls it), which was thus excited to a desire of knowledge. But those persons will in a most especial degree enjoy this philosophy, who, while they were only inhabitants of this world and enveloped in darkness, were still desirous of looking into these things with the eye of their mind.
Every generation will use its own imagery to approach the truth. I do my best not to mock or dismiss a language that is unfamiliar, and instead I try to work with it to uncover what is in common. Heaven knows, the words alone have a way of falling short, so I struggle to focus on the intended meaning.
When I was twelve, my friends and I, a group of impassioned science fiction nerds, were engaged in a fiery debate on the merits of various imaginary technologies. At that age, of course, we treated them as if they were quite real, and the tempers were rising.
“Don’t be stupid! Physics says that nothing can go faster than light, but in that story, they’re zipping from one galaxy to another in a few hours, and they never explain it!”
“Maybe it’s like warp drive in Star Trek, or hyperspace in Star Wars.”
“Sure, but how is that supposed to work? It’s no good just using cool names for things.”
“I was reading this one book, where they say the ships can travel at the speed of thought, which moves faster than light.”
“Oh, please, thought is about electricity in the brain, and that moves at the speed of light, so that’s still not fast enough!”
“Yeah, but it’s still pretty darn fast.”
“Hey, have you ever noticed how you can think about something that’s really far away, and you can be right there in your head, but you didn’t have to travel through the space to get there? Maybe it’s like that, where the laws about matter aren’t stopping you anymore.”
And so it went, for some time. Never underestimate the sense of wonder in a young mind, even if the thinking can be hasty and disordered.
I’m not sure why I so vividly remember that argument, but it comes to mind once more when I read Cicero wondering here about the immortality of the soul.
We are pushing the limits of our comprehension, discussing something we cannot yet explain thoroughly by means of the little bits that we can, and while Cicero is obviously working with more substance than a twelve-year-old boy, he is working with sensible examples to describe intelligible realities.
To help me get to the root of the matter, and to get behind the language of the ancient natural philosophers, which can still come across as alien to me, I isolate what I think might be the most critical points in this section:
First, to speak of the soul as being “lighter” and “quicker” than the body, and that its mode of existence is markedly different from the terrestrial, relates back to all that Cicero has suggested about mind acting on another level than matter. Again, the intelligible and the sensible are in one and the same world, but the former seeks to rise above the latter. We can use the language of myth, or the language of science, or something in between, but the principle remains the same.
Second, this contrast between the higher and the lower, whether spoken of by a poet or a philosopher, works on the grand scale of the whole cosmos as well as the personal scale of the individual person. By a physical analogy, the limitations of matter can weigh down the efforts of the mind to elevate itself to an understanding of the universal. I see further from the mountaintop than I do in the valley, and I comprehend more clearly without the distractions of the flesh.
Third, the sight of the heavens, and especially of the starry sky at night, serves as a profound inspiration for raising up our awareness to a more harmonious and perfect state, and it is surely no accident that so much of science began with astronomy. Is it perhaps a window to something absolute and eternal? To gaze up with awe, while still grounded in this life, is a kind of reaching up for greater things.
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