Of Light and Its Effects

Some Philosophers have called the sun the soul of the world, and have supposed it placed in the middle of the Universe, as it would be easier for it to communicate everywhere its benign influences from a center. Before having received them the Earth was in a kind of idleness, or as a female without the male. As soon as it was impregnated by them, it produced immediately, not simple vegetation as formerly, but animated and living beings, animals of all species. 

Thus the animals were the fruit of light, and having all the same principle, how could they, according to the common opinion, be antipathetic and contradictory It is from their union that all bodies are formed according to their different species, and their diversity arises only from the greater or less proportion of each element in their composition. 

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