[Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero]@TWC D-Link bookCicero’s Tusculan Disputations BOOK I 16/70
These opinions, taken separately, are apparently false; and, together, are directly inconsistent with each other. Xenophon has committed almost the same mistakes, but in fewer words.
In those sayings which he has related of Socrates, he introduces him disputing the lawfulness of inquiring into the form of the Deity, and makes him assert the sun and the mind to be Deities: he represents him likewise as affirming the being of one God only, and at another time of many; which are errors of almost the same kind which I before took notice of in Plato. XIII.
Antisthenes, in his book called the Natural Philosopher, says that there are many national and one natural Deity; but by this saying he destroys the power and nature of the Gods.
Speusippus is not much less in the wrong; who, following his uncle Plato, says that a certain incorporeal power governs everything; by which he endeavors to root out of our minds the knowledge of the Gods. Aristotle, in his third book of Philosophy, confounds many things together, as the rest have done; but he does not differ from his master Plato.
At one time he attributes all divinity to the mind, at another he asserts that the world is God.
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