The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [2]
5. Nor do fruits for ever keep their ancient forms, but grow new forms through time and nature’s changing course.
6. Could such be the outcome of an anarchy in things, arbitrarily arising from nothing? No:
7. For nature is orderly, and works by measure; all things arise from the elements in their generations,
8. Each kind exists by its own nature, formed from the primal bodies that are their source, and descended by steps through life’s rhythms.
9. We see lavished over the lands at spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,
10. The vines that mellow when autumn brings them to ripeness, because the seeds of things at their own season stream together,
11. And new forms and births are revealed when their due times arrive, and pregnant earth safely gives her offspring to the shores of light.
12. But if they came from nothing, without order and natural law, they might suddenly appear, unforeseen, in alien months, without parent;
13. Nor would they grow from living seeds, if life were an arbitrary product of emptiness or chaos:
14. Then the newborn infant would suddenly walk a man, and from the turf would leap a full-branched tree;
15. Rather, by nature each thing increases in order from its seed, and through its increase conserves its kind.
Chapter 4
1. From this comes the proof that nature’s bounty has proper origins in all its forms.
2. The fruitful earth, without its seasons of rains and sun, could not bear the produce that makes us glad,
3. And everything that lives, if deprived of nourishment, could neither survive nor further its kind.
4. We see that all things have elements in common, as we see letters common to many words.
5. Why should nature not make men large enough to ford the seas afoot, or tear mountains with their hands,
6. Or conquer time with great length of days, if it were not that all things are subject to proportion?
7. We see how far the tilled fields surpass the untilled, returning to the labour of our hands their more abounding crops;
8. Would we see, without toil of ours, the straight furrow and the tended orchard, fairer forms than ours coming from spontaneous generation? Yes;
9. For nature likewise is a husbandman, whose ploughshare turns the fertile soil and kneads the mould, quickening life to birth;
10. Nothing comes from nothing; all things have their origins in nature’s laws, and by their edicts reach the shores of light.
Chapter 5
1. When things fall and decay they return to primal bodies again; nothing perishes to annihilation.
2. For if time, that wastes with age the works of all the world, destroyed things entirely, how would nature’s generations replenish themselves, kind by kind?
3. How might the water-springs of the mountain, and the far-flowing inland rivers, keep the oceans full?
4. And what feeds the stars? Time and ages must otherwise eat all things away, except that nature’s laws infallibly rule that nothing returns to nothing.
5. Behold, the rains, streamed down from the sky, sink into the earth; then springs up the shining grain,
6. And boughs are green amid the trees, and trees themselves are heavy with fruit.
7. By these gifts of nature mankind and all creatures are fed; so joyful cities thrive with children, and woodlands echo with birdsong;
8. Cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk in the pastures while their milk flows, and sheep grow their wool on lush hillsides;
9. Nature offers its bounties; the kind earth gives up its stores; then what is given returns to its source, to prepare bounties anew;
10. Nothing perishes utterly, nor does anything come to birth but through some other thing’s death,
11. For death is nothing but the origin of life, as life is the compensation of death.
Chapter 6
1. And now, since nature teaches that things cannot be born from nothing,
2. Nor the same, when born, be recalled to nothingness, do not doubt this truth because our eyes cannot see the minute parts of things.
3. For mark those