Another question worthy of examination is: How will the rebirth come about if all things are resolved into fire? For if the substance is consumed by fire, the fire too must be extinguished having nothing any longer to feed it. Now if the fire remains the seminal principle of the ordered construction would be preserved, but if the fire perishes that principle perishes with it, and it is an enormity, a twofold sacrilege, not only to predicate destruction of the world but to do away with the rebirth as though God rejoiced in disorder and inactivity and every kind of faultiness. But we must examine it more carefully. Consider it from this point of view. Fire takes three forms: these are the live coal, the flame and the fire-light. Now live coal is fire embodied in an earthy substance, a sort of permeating current which has taken the fuel for its lair and lurks there extending through it from end to end. Flame is what rises up into the air from that which feeds it. Fire-light is what is sent out from the flame and co-operates with the eyes to give apprehension of things visible. The middle place between the light and the coal is held by flame, for when it is extinguished it dies away into coal, but when kindled into a blaze it has a radiance which flashes from it, though destitute of combustive force. If we say that at the conflagration the world is dissolved there would be no coal there, because if there were the great quantity of earthy matter which is the substance in which fire is contained will be still remaining and it is one of their tenets that nothing else of other bodies then subsists and that earth, water and air are resolved into fire pure and simple. Further there is no flame either, for flame is linked on to the fuel and when nothing is left it will be extinguished for lack of sustenance. It follows also that the light is not produced. For it has no existence of itself but issues from the first two, the coal and the flame, in a smaller stream from the coal but a great outflow from the flame, for it is diffused to a very great distance. But since the other two, as has been shown, do not exist at the conflagration, there will be no light either. For when the sun takes its course under the earth, the daylight, great and far-reaching as it is, is immediately hidden from our sight by the night, especially if it is moonless. Therefore the world is not consumed by conflagration but is indestructible, and if it should be so consumed another world could not come into existence.
On the Eternity of the World 17
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