The secret fire

Represent incessantly the universe to yourself as a single living being composed of one sort of matter, and of one soul.This is how all that passes in it is referred to one principle of feeling. This is how one single impulse makes the whole move, and this is why all it's products are an effect of a number of causes. O Universe! O Nature! You are the source of all, the ultimate terms of all. The same species of soul has been assigned to all animals, and the same intellectual soul to all reasoning beings, just as all terrestrial bodies are made of the same terrestrial matter , are as all that sees and breathes, sees but one and the same light, and breathes but one and the same air.

The light of the sun is one, though we see it dipersed on Walls, on mountains, and on a thousand differentd objects. Although divided into thousand of separate bodied, this is but one sort of matter. There is but one intelligent soul, though it seems to divide itself. We are united by a common partcipation in the same intelligence. You have forgotten that the soul of each of us is s god who had emanated from the supreme being.

Just as bodies after a brief sojourn on earth become change and at last dissolved so they may make way for others, so do souls after their sojourn in the air become changed as they return to the fertile bosom of universal reason. Just as all seas belong to the element of water. One and the same reason gives light to them all, just as the sun gives light to the earth and ocean .