IV
1. And all dependent from Above are subdivided into species in the fashion which I am to tell.
The genera of all things company with their own species; so that the genus is a class in its entirety, the species is part of a genus.
The genus of the Gods will, therefore, make the species of the Gods out of itself.
In like way, too, the genus of the daimons, and of men, likewise of birds, and of all [animals] the Cosmos doth contain within itself, brings into being species like itself.
There is besides a genus other than the animal,—a genus, or indeed a soul, in that it’s not without sensation,—in consequence of which it both finds happiness in suitable conditions, and pines and spoils in adverse ones;—I mean [the class] of all things on the earth which owe their life to the sound state of roots and shoots, of which the various kinds are scattered through the length and breadth of Earth.
2. The Heaven itself is full of God. The genera we have just mentioned, therefore, occupy up to the spaces of all things whose species are immortal.
For that a species is part of a genus,—as man, for instance, of mankind,—and that a part must follow its own class’s quality.
From which it comes to pass that though all genera are deathless, all species are not so.
The genus of Divinity is in itself and in its species [also] deathless.
As for the genera of other things,—as to their genus, they [too] are everlasting; [for] though [the genus] perish in its species, yet it persists through its fecundity in being born. And for this cause its species are beneath the sway of death; so that man mortal is, mankind immortal.