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
σπέρμα, as it were, the σπείρασις or the coiling up of a great
mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name
of φύσις, as if it were the inflation (ἐμφύσησις) and diffusion
of reason and numbers opened and loosened by it. But
now, in opposition to this, they maintain 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 size again recedes and settles, the
matter being after the generation gathered and contracted
into itself.
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