On the Eternity of the World 4

¹That it is created and indestructible is said to be shown by Plato in the Timaeus in his account of the great assembly of deities in which the younger gods are addressed thus by the eldest and chief. “Gods sprung from gods, the works of which I am the Maker and Father are indissoluble unless I will otherwise. Now all that is bound can be loosed but only the bad would will to loose what is well put together and in good condition. So since you are created beings you are not immortal nor altogether indissoluble, yet you will not be dissolved nor will death be your fate, for in my will you have a greater and mightier bond than those by which you were bound when you were created.” ²Some hold the notion that when Plato speaks of the world as created he does not mean that it began by being created but that if it had been created it would not have been formed in any other way than that which he describes, or else that he uses the word because the parts of the world are observed to come into being and to be changed. ³But this subtlety of theirs is not so good or true an idea as the view before mentioned, not merely because throughout the whole treatise he speaks of the great Framer of deities as the Father and Maker and Artificer and this world as His work and offspring, a sensible copy of the archetypal and intelligible model, embracing in itself as objects of sense all which that model contains as objects of intelligence, an impress for sense perception as absolutely perfect as that is for the mind. ⁴Another reason is that this view of Plato’s meaning has the testimony of Aristotle, who had too much respect for philosophy to falsify anything. A teacher can have no more trustworthy witness than a disciple and particularly one like Aristotle who did not treat culture as a by-work or with frivolous carelessness, but sought earnestly to transcend the truths discovered by the ancients and so struck out a new path by discovering some very vital additions to every part of philosophy.