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| Of Those Who Suppose that This World Indeed is Not Eternal, But that Either There are Numberless Worlds, or that One and the Same World is Perpetually Resolved into Its Elements, and Renewed at the Conclusion of Fixed Cycles.
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Chapter 11.—Of Those Who Suppose
that This World Indeed is Not Eternal, But that Either There are
Numberless Worlds, or that One and the Same World is Perpetually
Resolved into Its Elements, and Renewed at the Conclusion of Fixed
Cycles.
There are some, again, who, though
they do not suppose that this world is eternal, are of opinion
either that this is not the only world, but that there are
numberless worlds or that indeed it is the only one, but that it
dies, and is born again at fixed intervals, and this times without
number;541
| 541 The former opinion was held by
Democritus and his disciple Epicurus; the latter by Heraclitus, who
supposed that “God amused Himself” by thus renewing
worlds. | but they
must acknowledge that the human race existed before there were
other men to beget them. For they cannot suppose that, if the
whole world perish, some men would be left alive in the world, as
they might survive in floods and conflagrations, which those other
speculators suppose to be partial, and from which they can
therefore reasonably argue that a few then survived whose posterity
would renew the population; but as they believe that the world
itself is renewed out of its own material, so they must believe
that out of its elements the human race was produced, and then that
the progeny of mortals sprang like that of other animals from their
parents.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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