nd if you deprive it of
this nourishment, life will be altogether destroyed. But if you supply
it with so much as can be consumed in a day, then as much life will be
restored as was consumed, like the light of the candle which is
furnished to it by the fuel provided by the moisture of the candle, and
this light with most speedy succour restores beneath what is consumed
above as it dies in dusky smoke; and this death is continuous, likewise
the continuity of the smoke is equal to the continuity of the fuel; and
in the same moment the light dies and is born again together with the
movement of its fuel.

63.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of
animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the
death of others.

[Sidenote: Light]

64.

Look on light and consider its beauty. Shut your {24} eyes, and look
again: that which you see was not there before, and that which was, no
longer is. Who is he who remakes it if the producer is continually
dying?

65.

Anaxagoras: Everything proceeds from everything, and everything becomes
everything, because that which exists in the elements is composed of
those elements.

[Sidenote: Nature]

66.

Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother
of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the pitying
mother.

67.

Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death
of the other? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in
continually creating and making lives and forms, because she knows that
her earthly materials are thereby augmented, is more willing and swift
to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many
animals shall feed on each other. And as even thus her desire is not
satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and
pestilential vapours upon the increasing multitude and congregation of
animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent,
because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause,
{25} there would follow no effect. This earth, therefore, seeks to
lose its [animal] life, desiring only continual reproduction, and as,
by the logical demonstration you adduce, effects often resemble their
causes, animals are the image of the life of the world.

[Sidenote: Life's Philosophy]

68.

Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home to one's
former stat