Besides those already mentioned, there is another argument which may be used to prove the point, and this, too, will win the assent of those who prefer not to carry their contentiousness to an immoderate extent. In couples of opposites, it is impossible that one member should exist and the other not. If there is white there must be black also, if there is great there must be small, and so with odd and even, bitter and sweet, night and day, and the like. But when the conflagration has taken place we shall have an impossibility. For one of the opposites in couples will exist and the other will not. Consider the following facts. When all things are resolved into fire, there will be something light, rare and hot, since these qualities belong to fire, but nothing of their opposites, heavy, dense and cold. How could we better express the disorder woven by the conflagration theory than by showing that things naturally coexistent are disjoined from the coupling which holds them, and so far does this dissociation extend that we have to predicate perpetuity of the one set and non-existence of the other. Still further, a good point I think is made by the investigators of truth when they say that if the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed either by some other cause or by God. Nothing else at all will cause it to undergo dissolution. For there is nothing which it does not encompass and what is encompassed and dominated is surely weaker than what encompasses and therefore also dominates it. On the other hand, to say that it is destroyed by God is the worst of profanities. For those who hold the true creed acknowledge Him to be the cause, not of disorder, disharmony and destruction, but of order and harmony and life and all that is most excellent.
On the Eternity of the World 20
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