And moreover, Chrysippus, in his Third Book of
the Gods treating of the other Gods being nourished, says
thus: ‘The other Gods indeed use nourishment, being
equally sustained by it; but Jupiter and the World are sustained after another manner from those who are consumed
and were engendered by fire.’ Here indeed he declares,
that all the other Gods are nourished except the World and
[p. 467]
Jupiter; but in his First Book of Providence he says.
‘Jupiter increases till he has consumed all things into himself. For since death is the separation of the soul from
the body, and the soul of the World is not indeed separated,
but increases continually till it has consumed all matter into
itself, it is not to be said that the World dies.’ Who can
therefore appear to speak things more contradictory to himself than he who says that the same God is now nourished
and again not nourished? Nor is there any need of gathering this by argument; for himself has plainly written in
the same place: ‘But the World alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has in itself all things it stands
in need of, and is nourished and augmented of itself, the
other parts being mutually changed into one another.’ He
is then repugnant to himself, not only by declaring in one
place that all the Gods are nourished except the World and
Jupiter, and saying in another, that the World also is
nourished; but much more, when he affirms that the World
increases by nourishing itself. Now the contrary had been
much more probable, to wit, that the World alone does not
increase, having its own destruction for its food; but that
addition and increase are incident to the other Gods, who
are nourished from without, and the World is rather consumed into them, if so it is that the World feeds on itself,
and they always receive something and are nourished from
that.
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