A treatise on the history of philosophy, which is marked “spurious” in Kühn’s edition, I have also discovered among the essays of Plutarch where, too, it is classed as spurious.[851] In some ways it is suggestive of the middle ages. After an account of the history of Greek philosophy somewhat in the style of the brief reviews of the same to be found in the church fathers, it adds a sketch of the universe and natural phenomena not dissimilar to some medieval treatises of like scope. There are chapters on the universe, God, the sky, the stars, the sun, the moon, the _magnus annus_, the earth, the sea, the Nile, the senses, vision and mirrors, hearing, smell and taste, the voice, the soul, breathing, the processes of generation, and so on. [Sidenote: Divination and demons.] In discussing divination[852] the treatise states that Plato and the Stoics attributed it to God and to divinity of the spirit in ecstasy, or to interpretation of dreams or astrology or augury. Xenophanes and Epicurus denied it entirely. Pythagoras admitted only divination by _haruspices_ or by sacrifice. Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only divination by enthusiasm and by dreams. For although they deny that the human soul is immortal, they think that there is something divine about it. Herophilus said that dreams sent by God must come true. Other dreams are natural, when the mind forms images of things useful to it or about to happen to it. Still others are fortuitous or mere reflections of our desires. The treatise also takes up the subject of heroes and demons.[853] Epicurus denied the existence of either, but Thales, Plato, Pythagoras, and the Stoics agree that demons are natural substances, while heroes are souls separate from bodies, and are good or bad according to the lives of the men who lived in those bodies. [Sidenote: Celestial bodies.] The treatise also gives the opinions of various Greek philosophers on the question whether the universe or its component spheres are either animals or animated. Fate is defined on the authority of Heracleitus as “the heavenly body, the seed of the genesis of all things.”[854] The question is asked why babies born after seven months live, while those born after eight months die.[855] On the other hand, a very brief discussion of how the stars prognosticate does not go into particulars beyond their indication of seasons and weather, and even this Anaximenes ascribed to the effect of the sun alone.[856] Philolaus the Pythagorean is quoted concerning some lunar water about the stars[857] which reminds one of the waters above the firmament in the first chapter of Genesis. CHAPTER V ANCIENT APPLIED SCIENCE AND MAGIC: VITRUVIUS, HERO, AND THE GREEK ALCHEMISTS