Further, it is surely clear to everyone that if the earth is destroyed land animals too as a race must all perish: so, too, if water is destroyed, the aquatic, if air and fire, the traversers of the air and the fire-born. On the same analogy, if heaven is destroyed, the sun and moon will be destroyed, so also the other planets, so also the fixed stars, that mighty host of visible gods whose blessedness from of old has been recognized. This would be the same as supposing that gods are destroyed, and that is on a par with supposing also that men are immortal. Though if we compare one futility with another we shall find on examination that this is more reasonable than that. Through the grace of God a mortal may conceivably gain immortality, but that gods should lose their indestructibility is impossible whatever the mischievous ravings of men’s philosophies may say. And indeed those who propound the doctrines of conflagration and rebirth hold and openly declare the god-head of the stars which they destroy in their theorizing without a blush. For they must either declare them to be lumps of red hot metal as do some of those who nonsensically talk of the whole heaven as if it were a prison, or regarding them as divine or superhuman beings also acknowledge that they have the indestructibility which befits gods. In fact they err so far from the true doctrine that they fail to observe that in their inconsistent philosophizing they are imposing destruction on providence also which is the soul of the world. So at least says the most esteemed among them, Chrysippus, who in his treatise on “increase” makes the following marvellous statement. Starting from the premise that there cannot be two individuals qualifying the same substance he continues “as an illustration, suppose that one person has all his members and that another has only one foot and let us call the first Dion and the defective one Theon and then suppose that Dion has one of his feet cut off.” Now if we ask which of the two has suffered destruction, he thinks that Theon is the more correct answer. This savours more of paradox than of truth. For how can one say that Theon the unmutilated has been made away with while Dion whose foot is amputated has suffered no destruction? “Quite rightly,” he replies, “for Dion who has had his foot amputated has passed over to the defective substance of Theon. Two individuals cannot qualify the same substratum and so Dion must remain and Theon has been destroyed.” Themselves, no others, winged the shaft which slew them, as says the tragic poet. For by reproducing this form of argument and applying it to the whole world one can very clearly show that providence itself is also destroyed. Consider it as follows. Postulate on the one hand the world which is complete like Dion and on the other the soul of the world as Theon, for the part is less than the whole. Then just as we take away Dion’s foot, take away from the world all its bodily part. Then we must say that the world which has lost its body has not been destroyed just as Dion whose foot was cut off was not destroyed. But the soul of the world has been destroyed just as Theon who suffered no injury was destroyed. The world has passed over into a lesser state of being since its bodily part has been taken from it and its soul has been destroyed because two individuals cannot qualify the same substratum. Now to say that providence is destroyed is an atrocity but if providence is indestructible the world also is indestructible.
On the Eternity of the World 9
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