Nevertheless, this point also is worthy of one consideration: that everything which is born must by all means at the beginning be imperfect, but as time advances he must increase till he arrives at complete perfection, so that if the world was born it was at one time (that I may use the expressions appropriate to the ages of men) a mere infant, and subsequently increasing in periods of years and lapse of time, it at last and with great difficulty arrived at perfection, for of necessity the period at which that which of all things has the longest existence must be late.
 But if any one fancies that the world has ever really been subjected to such changes as these, it is time that he should learn that he has been under the influence of incurable madness, for it is plain that if that is the case not only will its bodily appearance be increased, but its mind also will receive growth, since they who attribute liability to perish to it conceive it to be a rational creature. Therefore, just like a man, it will be devoid of reason at the commencement of its existence, but endowed with reason at the age when it is in its prime, which it is impious not only to say, but even to think, for how can we imagine the most perfect visible circumference which surrounds us, and which contains within itself so many individual inhabitants, is not always perfect both in soul and body, being exempt from all those evils in which everything which has been born and which is perishable is implicated?
 And in addition to this he says, that there are three causes of death to living animals, besides the external causes
 
which may affect them, namely, disease, old age, and want, by no one of which is the world liable to be attacked or subdued, for that it is composed of entire elements, since there is no part of them which is left out or which remains at liberty, so that any violence can be offered to it, and it also is superior to those powers from which diseases arise; and they yielding keep the world free from all disease, and free from old age, and in a state of the most perfect self-sufficiency as to all its requirements, and without need of anything, since there is nothing wanting to it which can possibly contribute to its durability, and wholly exempt from all successions and alternations of fulness and emptiness, which animals being subject to by reason of their unregulated insatiability, bring upon themselves death instead of life, or, to speak more accurately, a life which is more pitiable than any destruction.
 Moreover, if we saw that there was no such thing as any eternal nature to be seen, those who assert the liability of the world to destruction would not appear to be so guilty of disparaging the world without any excuse, since they would have no example whatever of anything being everlasting; but since fate, according to the doctrine of those who have investigated the principles of natural philosophy most accurately, is a thing without any beginning and without any end, connecting all the causes of everything, as to leave no break and no interruption, why may we not in like manner also affirm of the nature of the world that it subsists for a great length of time, being, as it were, an arrangement of what is otherwise in no order, a harmony of what is otherwise wholly destitute of such harmony, an agreement of what is otherwise without agreement, a union of things previously separated, a condition of stocks and stones, a nature of things growing from seed and of trees, a life of all animals, the mind and reason of men, and the most perfect virtue of virtuous men?
But if the nature of the world is uncreated and indestructible, then it is plain that the world is held together and powerfully preserved by an everlasting indissoluble chain.