On the Eternity of the World 11

¹Critolaus, one of the votaries of the Muses, a lover of the Peripatetic philosophy, who assents to the doctrine of the perpetuity of the world, used the following arguments. If the world has been created, the earth must have been so too, and if the earth was created, so certainly must have been the human race, but man is uncreated and his race has existed from everlasting as will be shown, therefore the world also is everlasting. ²Now for the establishment of the point just left for discussion if, indeed, facts so obvious need proof. But they do need it, because of the myth-makers who have infected our life with their falsehoods and chased away truth from its borders. They have forced not only cities and houses but also every single individual to lack that best of possessions and devised as a bait to trap them metres and rhythms and so expressed their views in an attractive form. With these they bewitch the ears of the foolish as uncomely and repulsive courtesans bewitch their eyes with their trappings and spurious adornment for lack of the genuine. ³These people say that the birth of mankind from mankind is a later work of nature and that the earlier and more original form was a generation from the earth, since the earth both is and is held to be the mother of all things and that the Sown men celebrated in Grecian lore sprang from the earth as trees do now, full-grown and in armour. ⁴That this is a mythical fiction can be easily seen on many grounds; one is that the growth of the man first born must have followed periods of time determined by fixed measurements and numerical rules. For nature has created the stages of age as a sort of steps by which man may be said to go up and down, up while he is growing, down in the times of his decreasing. The limit of the upward steps is the culmination of youth. When he has reached this he no longer advances but like the runners of the double course who return along the self-same track he repays to feeble old age all that he received from lusty youth. ⁵But to think that any were born full-grown from the first shows an ignorance of those immutable statutes, the laws of nature. Our decisions and judgements reflect the discord which belongs to the mortal element, our yokefellow, and may be expected to admit of change and instability. But there is no swerving in the nature of the universe, for that nature is supreme above all and so steadfast are its decisions once taken that it keeps immutable the limits fixed from the beginning. ⁶If then nature had thought it fitting that they should be produced full-grown, mankind would even now be created in that condition, not as infants, nor boys nor youths, but in manhood straight away, and perhaps altogether proof against old age and death. What is not subject to increase is not subject to decrease either, for the process of the changes up to manhood is one of increase but from manhood to old age and death one of decrease, and it is reasonable that one who is exempt from the first set of changes should not be subject to those which follow. ⁷And what is to prevent men from springing now as they are alleged to have sprung in former times? Has the earth too grown so old that it may be thought to have been sterilized by length of time? On the contrary it remains as it was ever young, because it is the fourth part of the All and is bound to remain undecayed in order to conserve the sum of things, just as also its sister elements, water, air and fire, continue to defy old age. ⁸A clear proof that the earth retains its vigour continually and perpetually at its height is its vegetation, for purified either by the overflow of rivers, as they say is the case in Egypt, or by the annual rains, it takes a respite and relaxation from the weary toil of bearing fruit, and then after this interval of rest recuperates its native force till it reaches its full strength and then begins again to bear fruits like the old and supplies in abundance to each kind of living creature such food as they need.