On the Incorruptibility of the World (11-15)

and he said in a cavilling and reproachful tone, that formerly he had feared for his house lest it should be overthrown by violent gales, or extraordinary storms, or by lapse of time, or through the want of the proper care requisite to preserve it,

But some say that it was not Aristotle who invented this doctrine, but some of the Pythagoreans; but I have met with a work of Ocellus, a Lucanian by birth, entitled, "A Treatise on the Nature of the Universe," in which he has not only asserted that the world is indestructible, but he has even endeavoured to prove it so by demonstrative proofs.

But some say that the world has been proved by Plato in the Timaeus to be both uncreated and indestructible, in the account of that divine assembly in which the younger gods are addressed by the eldest and the governor of them all in the following terms; [*]"O ye gods of gods, those works of which I am the father and the creator are indissoluble as long as I choose that they shall be so. Now everything which has been bound together is capable of being dissolved, but it is the part of an evil ruler to dissolve that which has been well combined and arranged, and which is in good condition. Wherefore, since you also have been created, you are not of necessity immortal or utterly indissoluble; nevertheless you shall not be dissolved, nor shall you be exposed to the fate of death, inasmuch as you have my will to keep you united, which is a still greater and more powerful bond than those by which you were bound together when you were first created."

But some persons interpret Plato’s words sophistically, and think that he affirms that the world was created, not inasmuch as it has had a beginning of creation, but inasmuch as if it had been created it could not possibly have existed in any other manner than that in which it actually does exist as has been described, or else because it is in its creation and change that the parts are seen.

But the forementioned opinion is better and truer, not only because throughout the whole treatise he affirms that the Creator of the gods is also the father and creator and maker of everything, and that the world is a most beautiful work of his and his offspring, being an imitation visible to the outward senses of an archetypal model appreciable only by the intellect, comprehending in itself as many objects of the outward senses as the model does objects [*]