Some think that the poet Hesiod is the father of this Platonic doctrine and suppose that he calls the world uncreated and indestructible, uncreated because he says First Chaos was, and then broad-breasted earth Safe dwelling-place for all for evermore, indestructible because he never declared that it will be dissolved or destroyed. Chaos in Aristotle’s opinion is a space because a body must have something there already to hold it, but some of the Stoics suppose that it is water and that the name is derived from its diffusion (χύσις). But whichever of these is right Hesiod very clearly states the view that the world is created and long before Hesiod Moses the lawgiver of the Jews said in the Holy Books that it was created and imperishable. These books are five in number, to the first of which he gave the name of Genesis. In this he begins by saying “In the beginning God made the Heavens and the Earth and the Earth was invisible and without form.” Then again he goes on to say in the sequel that “days and nights and seasons and years and the sun and moon whose natural function is to measure time are together with the whole heaven destined to immortality and continue indestructible.” Respect for that visible God requires that we should begin the discussion in the proper way by setting forth first the arguments which contend that it is uncreated and indestructible. All things which are liable to perish are subject to two fundamental sources of destruction, the external and the internal. Thus iron, brass and similar substances will be found to vanish of themselves when devoured by the rust which courses over them like a creeping sickness; and also through external agencies, when a house or city is burnt and they too are caught in the flames and dissolved through the violence of the rushing fire. Similarly, too, living creatures die of themselves through disease or through external causes, being slain with the sword or stoned or burnt or suffering the unclean death of hanging. Now if the world is destroyed it will necessarily be through either some force from without or some of those which it contains within itself, and both of these are impossible. For there is nothing outside the world since all things have been brought into contribution to fill it up, and filled it must be if it is to be one and a total and unaging: one because if some things are left out another world would come into being like the one that now is; total because all that exists is used up to make it; proof against age and disease because the bodies which fall a prey to diseases and old age succumb to the powerful onsets from outside of heat and cold and all other opposite extremes, and none of these forces can escape from the world to surround and attack it, for they are all in their entirety confined within it and no part of them stays away from it. And if there is anything outside it will necessarily be a void, the impassive form of existence which cannot be acted on or act. Neither again will anything internal cause its dissolution. First because if it did the part would be greater and stronger than the whole, which is against all reason. For the world while exerting a force which nothing can surpass propels all its parts and is propelled by none. Secondly because as the sources of destruction are twofold, one external and one internal, things which can be subject to one of these two must certainly be susceptible to the other. As a proof of this we see that an ox or a horse or a man or other similar creatures since they are liable to be killed by an iron weapon are also liable to die through disease. For it is difficult or rather impossible to find anything which if susceptible to destruction through an external cause is entirely proof against an internal. Since then it has been shown that the world will not be destroyed by anything external because nothing at all has been left outside, neither will anything within it cause its destruction as demonstrated by the argument stated above, namely that that which is liable to be destroyed by one of the causes must be susceptible to the other.
On the Eternity of the World 5
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