Critolaus in his contention used also this further kind of argument: That which causes itself to be healthy is free from disease, that which causes itself to be wakeful is wakeful, and if this is so, that which causes itself to exist is everlasting. But the world, since it causes all other things to exist, causes itself to exist, and therefore the world is everlasting. This is not all. A further point worth consideration is that every created thing must in its beginning be quite imperfect and only as time advances grow to its full perfection. Consequently if the world has been created it was once, if I too may borrow a term from those applied to the stages of human life, a mere infant, and afterwards progressing through the revolutions of years and long stretches of time, was at long last and with difficulty brought to perfection. For the very long-lived is necessarily slow to reach its culmination. Now if anyone thinks that the world has passed through such changes, he had better recognize that he is under the sway of a fatal delusion. For clearly not only will the world’s bodily parts increase but its mind also will make advances, for those who preach its destruction also suppose that it is rational. So then like a man, when it originally comes into being it will be irrational, but at the age of culmination rational. Such things are impious not merely to speak but even to think. Surely this the all-perfect which embraces things visible wherein the several occupants included are gods, deserves to be held ever perfect both in body and soul, immune from the plagues inseparable from all that is created and destructible.
On the Eternity of the World 14
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