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their entire duration unalterable and unmodified, living the best
and most selfsufficient of lives. As a matter of fact, this word 'duration'
possessed a divine significance for the ancients, for the fulfilment
which includes the period of life of any creature, outside of which
no natural development can fall, has been called its duration. On
the same principle the fulfilment of the whole heaven, the fulfilment
which includes all time and infinity, is 'duration'-a name based upon
the fact that it is always-duration immortal and divine. From it derive
the being and life which other things, some more or less articulately
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ON THE HEAVENS 18
but others feebly, enjoy. So, too, in its discussions concerning the
divine, popular philosophy often propounds the view that whatever
is divine, whatever is primary and supreme, is necessarily unchangeable.
This fact confirms what we have said. For there is nothing else stronger
than it to move it-since that would mean more divine-and it has no
defect and lacks none of its proper excellences. Its unceasing movement,
then, is also reasonable, since everything ceases to move when it
comes to its proper place, but the body whose path is the circle has
one and the same place for starting-point and goal.
Part 10
Having established these distinctions, we may now proceed to the question
whether the heaven is ungenerated or generated, indestructible or
destructible. Let us start with a review of the theories of other
thinkers; for the proofs of a theory are difficulties for the contrary
theory. Besides, those who have first heard the pleas of our adversaries
will be more likely to credit the assertions which we are going to
make. We shall be less open to the charge of procuring judgement by
default. To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary
to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.
That the world was generated all are agreed, but, generation over,
some say that it is eternal, others say that it is destructible like
any other natural formation. Others again, with Empedliocles of Acragas
and Heraclitus of Ephesus, believe that there is alternation in the
destructive process, which takes now this direction, now that, and
continues without end.
Now to assert that it was generated and yet is eternal is to assert
the impossible; for we cannot reasonably attribute to anything any
characteristics but those which observation detects in many or all
instances. But in this case the facts point the other way: generated
things are seen always to be destroyed. Further, a thing whose present
state had no beginning and which could not have been other than it
was at any previous moment throughout its entire duration, cannot
possibly be changed. For there will have to be some cause of change,
and if this had been present earlier it would have made possible another
condition of that to which any other condition was impossible. Suppose
that the world was formed out of elements which were formerly otherwise
conditioned than as they are now. Then (1) if their condition was
always so and could not have been otherwise, the world could never
have come into being. And (2) if the world did come into being, then,
clearly, their condition must have been capable of change and not
eternal: after combination therefore they will be dispersed, just
as in the past after dispersion they came into combination, and this
process either has been, or could have been, indefinitely repeated.
But if this is so, the world cannot be indestructible, and it does
not matter whether the change of condition has actually occurred or
remains a possibility.
Some of those who hold that the world, though indestructible, was
yet generated, try to support their case by a parallel which is illusory.
They say that in their statements about its generation they are doing
what geometricians do when they construct their figures, not implying
that the universe really had a beginning, but for didactic reasons
facilitating understanding by exhibiting the object, like the figure,
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ON THE HEAVENS 19
as in course of formation. The two cases, as we said, are not parallel;
for, in the construction of the figure, when the various steps are
completed the required figure forthwith results; but in these other
demonstrations what results is not that which was required. Indeed
it cannot be so; for antecedent and consequent, as assumed, are in
contradiction. The ordered, it is said, arose out of the unordered;
and the same thing cannot be at the same time both ordered and unordered;
there must be a process and a lapse of time separating the two states. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]