 But nature also refers, compatibly, to the nature of the universe as a whole, since on the Stoic theory that Cicero draws upon (a theory set out more fully in Book 2 of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, see esp. 2.73–90), the universe – ‘all of nature’, as Cicero puts it – is governed by god (1.21). God in turn exercises governing power through the activity of right reason, which we humans, at least in our best condition, share with god (1.23). Reason is thus natural, in that it underlies the workings of the universe; and since we possess it too, as the divine element in us, in expressing our human nature it expresses our kinship with the gods as well. Hence Cicero can refer in Book 2 of the Laws to the ‘true and original law’ as identified with the right reason of god (2.10).