Complete Works of Philo Judaeus (Vol. 6)

in such a way that no part is left behind or acting independently, so as to be forced; and that it possesses all the powers from which weaknesses arise; and that the yielding parts keep it free from disease and old age, and that it has become most self-sufficient and lacking in nothing, with nothing missing for its endurance, having pushed away the cycles of emptying and filling in turn, which animals use because of their tasteless greed, seeking death instead of life, or, to put it more safely, a life more pitiful than destruction. Furthermore, if no nature were seen to be eternal, those who introduce the destruction of the world would be less blameworthy, having no example of eternity. But since destiny, according to the best physiologists, is without beginning or end, weaving the causes of each thing without omission or separation, why should we not also say that the nature of the world is long-lived, the order of the disordered, the harmony of the inharmonious, the symphony of the unsymphonic, the unity of separated things, the condition of wood and stones, the nature of sown things and trees, the soul of all animals, the mind and reason of humans, and the most perfect virtue of the noble? If the nature of the world is unbegotten and indestructible, it is clear that the world is also held together and constrained by an eternal bond. Overcome by the truth, some of those who held opposite opinions changed their minds. For beauty has a compelling power; and the true is divinely beautiful, just as the false is strangely ugly. Boethus, Posidonius, and Panaetius, men who were strong in Stoic doctrines, being inspired by the divine, abandoned the ekpyrosis conflagration and palingenesis rebirth/regeneration, and defected to the more divine doctrine of the indestructibility of the whole world. It is said that Diogenes also, when he was young, agreed entirely with those inside...