absurd
things against his nature and will, than that there is not any
intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover,
since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if this
be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must be
some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now I
know not whether any one that shall go about to disprove such things
will not show himself more ridiculous than those who assert and affirm
them.

Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more and
greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature in all
animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small, slender,
and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest.
For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk,
or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn
which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting
generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the
stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence
also they say that seed is in Greek called [Greek omitted], as it
were, the [Greek omitted] or the WINDING UP of a great mass in a little
compass; and that Nature has the name of [Greek omitted], as if it were
the INFLATION [Greek omitted] and diffusion of reason and numbers opened
and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this, they hold that fire
is the seed of the world, which shall after the conflagration change
into seed the world, which will then have a copious nature from a
smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite space of vacuum filled
by its increase; and the world being made, the form again recedes and
settles, the matter being after the generation gathered and contracted
into itself.

You may hear them and read many of their writings, in which they jangle
with the Academics, and cry out against them as confounding all things
with their paradox of indistinguishable identity, and as vehemently
contending that there is but one quality in two substances. And yet
there is no man who understands not this, and would not on the contrary
think it wonderful and extremely strange if there should not in all time
be found one kind of dove exactly and in all respects like to another
dove, a bee to a bee, a grain of wheat to a grain of wheat, or (as the
proverb has it) one fig to another. But thes