has no existence except in shadow, beyond the limits of fantastic thought? Seems it to you a natural thing that they should live divinely and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and animals? It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that which she at present offers to you, you stupidly despise? Heaven the second gift denies, To him who does the first despise. With these and similar reasons the soul, taking part with the weakest, seeks to recall the thoughts to the care of the body. And these, although late, come and show themselves, but not in that form in which they departed, but only to declare their rebellion, and force her to follow. And the sorrowing one thus laments: 23. Ah, dogs of Actaeon, ah, proud ingrates! Whom to the abode of my divinity I sent; Without hope do ye return to me; And, coming to the mother's side, ye bring Back unto me a too unhappy boon; Ye mangle me, and will that I live not. Leave me, life, that I may mount up to my sun, A double streamlet, mad, without my fount! When shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve? When shall it be, that, taking myself hence, And swiftly rising to the heights above, Together with my heart I may abide, And with my thoughts I may be deified? The Platonists say that the soul, as to its superior part, always consists in the intellect, in which it has more of understanding than of soul, seeing that it is called soul only in so far as it vivifies the body and sustains it. So here, the same essence which nourishes and maintains the thoughts on high, together with the exalted heart, is induced by the inferior part to afflict itself, and recall them as rebels. CIC. So that they are not two contrary existences, but one, subject to two contradictory terms?