A Treatise on the Incorruptibility of the World.

 I. (1) In every uncertain and important business it is proper to invoke God, because he is the good Creator of the world, and because nothing is uncer

 II. (4) The world, therefore, is spoken of in its primary sense as a single system, consisting of the heaven and the stars in the circumference of the

 III. (7) And there are three different opinions on the subject which we are at present discussing. Since some persons affirm that the world is eternal

 IV. (13) But some say that the world has been proved by Plato in the Timaeus to be both uncreated and indestructible, in the account of that divine as

 V. (17) But some persons think that the father of the Platonic theory was the poet Hesiod, as they conceive that the world is spoken of by him as crea

 VI. (25) And there are testimonies also in the Timaeus to the fact of the world being exempt from disease and not liable to destruction, such as these

 VII. (32) But since the world has no participation in that irregularity which exists in the things which I have just been mentioning, let us stop awhi

 VIII. (39) However, this argument also is a most demonstrative one, on which I know that vast numbers of philosophers pride themselves as one most acc

 IX. (45) And, indeed, this I imagine is evident to every one, that if the earth were to be destroyed, then all land animals of every kind must also pe

 X. (52) However, time also affords a very great argument in favour of the eternity of the world, for if time is uncreated, then it follows of necessit

 XI. (55) But Critolaus, a man who devoted himself very much to literature, and a lover of the Peripatetic philosophy, agreeing with the doctrine of th

 XII. (63) In reference to which fact it appears to me that the poets were very felicitous in the appellation which they gave to the earth when they ca

 XIII. (69) We have now then discussed at sufficient length the nonsense in opposition to truth which is uttered by those who build up falsehood and fa

 XIV. (70) But Critolaus, in arguing in support of his opinion, brought forward an argument of this kind, --That which is the cause to man of his bein

 XV. (74) And in addition to this he says, that there are three causes of death to living animals, besides the external causes which may affect them, n

 XVI. (78) But Boethus adduces the most convincing arguments, which we shall proceed to mention immediately for if, says he, the world was created and

 XVII. (85) Is it not however worth while to examine this question, in what manner there can be a regeneration of all those things which have been dest

 XVIII. (89) On which account some of the Stoics also, being gifted with a more acute discernment, and perceiving that they would infallibly be convict

 XIX. (94) Nevertheless, as Chryssipus says, some suppose that fire resolves all the arrangement of the universe when the elements are separated into i

 XX. (104) However, besides what has been here said, any one may use this argument also in corroboration of his opinion, which will certainly convince

 XXI. (107) But a person may very likely wonder at those who talk about conflagrations and regenerations, not only on account of the arguments which I

 XXII. (113) But some of those persons who have fancied that the world is everlasting, inventing a variety of new arguments, employ also such a system

 XXIII. (117) Theophrastus, moreover, says that those men who attribute a beginning and destructibility to the world are deceived by four particulars o

 XXIV. (124) And for the purpose of establishing the third alternative of this question they use the following argument: beyond all question that thing

 XXV. (132) But it is necessary to encounter such quibbling arguments as these, lest some persons of too little experience should yield to and be led a

 XXVI. These things, then, may be said by us with respect to the argument that the inequalities of the surface of the earth are no proof of the world h

 XVII. (143) And as for the third argument, it is convicted by itself, as being derived only from an unsound system of questioning proceeding from the

XVII. (143) And as for the third argument, it is convicted by itself, as being derived only from an unsound system of questioning proceeding from the assertions originally made; for in truth it does not necessarily follow that a thing, all the parts of which are liable to corruption, is likewise perishable itself; but this is only inevitably true of that thing of which all the parts are perishable when taken collectively and together in the same place and at the same time, since in the case of a person who has the tip of his finger cut off, he is not disabled from living, but if he had the whole collection of all his parts and limbs cut off at once, he would die immediately. (144) Therefore in the same manner, if all the elements of the world together were all to disappear at one and the same moment, then it would be necessary to admit that the world was liable to corruption and destruction; but if each of these elements separately only changes its nature so as to assimilate to that of its nature, it is then rendered immortal rather than destroyed, according to the philosophical statement of the tragic poet--

"Nought that has once existed dies,

Though often what has been combined

Before, we separated find,

Invested with another form."

(145) For it is the greatest folly imaginable to estimate the antiquity of the human race from the state of art; for if any one were to follow the absurdity of such a system of reasoning as this, he will prove the world to be very young indeed, and to have been made scarcely a thousand years, since all those men whom we have heard of traditionally as the discoverers in different branches of science do not to back to a greater number of years than that which I have mentioned. (146) But if we must speak of the arts as coeval with the race of mankind, then we must speak, drawing our arguments from natural history, and not inconsiderately or carelessly. And what is this history? The destruction of the things on the earth, not all together, but of the greatest number of them, is attributed to two principal causes, the indescribable violence and power of fire and water. And they say that each of these elements attacks them in its turn, after very long periods of revolving years. (147) When, therefore, a conflagration seizes upon things, a stream of ethereal fire being poured down from above is frequently diffused over them, overrunning many districts of the habitable world; and when a deluge draws down the whole of the rainy nature of water, the regular rivers and torrents overflowing, and not only that, but even far exceeding the ordinary measure of a common flood, and breaking down their banks with their violence, or else overleaping them, and rising to an enormous height, from which they swell and are diffused over all the adjacent champaign country, and the land is in the first instance divided into huge lakes, as the water is continually settling down into the more hollow parts, and afterwards flows still higher, and inundates the isthmuses which separate the lakes, till at last everything presents the appearing of one vast sea from the union of so many waters. (148) And then it happens that, through the violence of these powers contending against one another in turn, the inhabitants of the places exposed to it are destroyed; those who dwell on the mountains and higher ground, and in ill-watered districts, being destroyed by fire, as not having a sufficiency of water, which is the natural weapon with which to repel fire, and those, on the other hand, being destroyed by water who live on the banks of rivers or lakes, or on the shores of the sea, for evils like to attack those who are nearest first, or indeed solely. (149) Accordingly, when the greater part of mankind is destroyed in the manners above mentioned, besides an infinity of other ways of less power and importance, it follows of necessity that the arts also must fail, for it cannot be possible to discuss science by itself without some one to reduce it to method and practice. But when those common pestilences relax their fury, and when the human race begins again to recover vigour and to flourish, descending from those who have not been previously destroyed by the evils which pressed upon them, then the arts also begin again to exist, not indeed as they were at fist, but in thinner numbers from the diminution of the numbers of those who practise them. (150) I have now then set forth to the best of my ability what I have been able to learn or to understand concerning the indestructibility of the world, and in the subsequent treatises I shall proceed to show what may be said against each of the arguments here stated.