This chapter is devoted to On Regimen, the longest and by far most complex work by a cosmological doctor to have survived from the Classical period. Topics discussed include the “self-sufficiency” (autarkeia) of fire and water, the pendular movement of various cycles, the two-way “resemblance” (apomimesis) between the body and the cosmos, and the use of both cosmological principles and “prodiagnosis” as a solution to the problem of individualization. This chapter also considers On Regimen’s theories about the soul, which is concentrated in the sun and separates off into other, smaller souls to give movement, life, intelligence, and divinity to everything it inhabits.

Chapter 2 concerns Holwell’s religiously heterodox interpretation of Hinduism, which is at the core of the book’s thesis, since his account would establish the ideas that would also run thematically throughout the works of Dow, Halhed and Wilkins. It outlines how Holwell’s interpretation of ‘the religion of the Gentoos’ was shaped by his preoccupation with heterodox religious arguments, as well as some genuine insight into Indian philosophical concepts. Despite its idiosyncratic origins, Holwell’s work captured some important tropes in deistic approaches to comparative religion, such as a narrative of original religion corrupted by priestcraft, which would come to dominate British constructions of India’s original ancient religion throughout the century.

This chapter argues against a commonly held assumption that Porphyry is (one of) Calcidius' (main) source(s), by comparing the fragments of the former's commentary on the Timaeus to Calcidius' approach, and analyzing more closely views attributed to Porphyry on the human soul, the transmigration of human souls into animals, matter, and Form.