On the Incorruptibility of the World (96-100)

Do you not see how many materials of plants susceptible of cultivation there are, and how many kinds of wild plants too are diffused over every portion of the earth? Every one of these trees, as long as the trunk is in good health, together with its fruit, produces also a seed to propagate its species; but becoming destroyed after a lapse of time, and being wholly withered, roots and all, it never becomes resolved into a ripened seed.

And so too in the same manner the different kinds of animals, which it is not easy even to enumerate by reason of their multitude, as long as they survive and flourish vigorously, produce a seed, which is calculated to propagate their species; but when they are dead there is no longer any seed. For it would be absurd for a man when he is alive to employ only the eighth part of his soul, which is called the generative power, for the propagation of a being like himself, but after he

And besides, there is no single existing thing which is brought to perfection by seed alone without its appropriate nourishment. For seed resembles the beginning, and the beginning by itself does not make perfect; for beware of imagining that the ear of corn blossoms and ripens solely from the seed, which is cast by the husbandman on the ploughed field; for in truth, dryness and moisture, the twofold moisture which is derived from the earth, co-operate in the greatest degree towards its growth. And so the creature which is fashioned in the womb is not permitted by nature to be brought to life and perfection by the seed alone, but also by the nourishment shed upon it from without, which the woman who has conceived supplies.

Why then do I say this? Because in the case of such a conflagration as that of which I have been speaking, the seed alone will be left, there being no nutriment remaining, since everything which was to have supplied nutriment will have been resolved into fire; so that the world, which would be to be formed, according to the principle of regeneration, will have a lame and imperfect form and character, since that which is chiefly required to co-operate towards its perfection, on which, as on a staff, the seminal origin ought to, and naturally does, lean, is destroyed; but this would be absurd, as is shown, and made manifest from the clearest evidence.

Again, all those things which derive their origin from seed are of a greater magnitude than the seed which gives them their existence, and are seen to fill a more extended space; for very often trees, whose tops reach to heaven itself, shoot up out of a very small grain of seed; and the fattest and tallest animals grow from a very small quantity of moisture, which is laid as their foundation; but there happens that which was mentioned a little while ago, that these, at the time nearest to their birth are very little, but that subsequently they keep on increasing in size till they arrive at complete perfection.