Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

No further proof is required: we have only to reflect that we attach the attribute of time to days and nights and their parts, and likewise to feelings of pleasure and pain and to neutral states, to states of movement and states of rest, conceiving a peculiar accident of these to be this very characteristic which we express by the word time. [He says this both in the second book On Nature and in the Larger Epitome.]

After the foregoing we have next to consider that the worlds and every finite aggregate which bears a strong resemblance to things we commonly see have arisen out of the infinite.[*](Cf. Lucr. ii. 1048-1089.) For all these, whether small or great, have been separated off from special conglomerations of atoms; and all things are again dissolved,[*](Cf. Lucr. ii. 1144, 1145; Stob. Ecl. i. 20, 172 W.) some faster, some slower, some through the action of one set of causes, others through the action of another. [It is clear, then, that he also makes the worlds perishable, as their parts are subject to change. Elsewhere he says the earth is supported on the air.]

And further, we must not suppose that the worlds have necessarily one and the same shape. [On the contrary, in the twelfth book On Nature he himself says that the shapes of the worlds differ, some being spherical, some oval, others again of shapes different

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from these. They do not, however, admit of every shape. Nor are they living beings which have been separated from the infinite.] For nobody can prove that in one sort of world there might not be contained, whereas in another sort of world there could not possibly be, the seeds out of which animals and plants arise and all the rest of the things we see. [And the same holds good for their nurture in a world after they have arisen. And so too we must think it happens upon the earth also.]