On Providence and Other Essays (English and Latin Edition)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... from themselves or from something else. If from themselves, they either took beginning from themselves or have existed by themselves from eternity. If they took beginning from themselves, they existed before they did exist, for they brought themselves into existence. Nothing cannot beget anything. If they have existed from eternity, they are infinite, for only the infinite is eternal, infinite and eternal are convertible terms, that is, are equal or rather actually identical. But since the stars are not infinite (for what an army of them that little organ, the eye, can take in at a glance!), it follows that they come from some one else and that some one else, the mover and author of all things, is their God and father. For though we listen to the philosophers discussing about their heavens, about spheres and circles and their powers, yet we must at last come to one only and original mover, as our starting point. This is the Deity. Secondly, I answer the argument that appeals to the simple: that the stars have bodies quite the opposite of the earth's, to wit, that they are rapid in motion, while it is sluggish and dull, that they are very bright while it is dark and black, no more proves that their original generation is of themselves than if one should maintain that plants are of original self-generation, because they increase and grow, bloom, bear fruit, wither and die, while the earth does none of these, basing this argument on the ground of their superiority of endowment over the earth in power and action. For they spring from the earth and are nourished and supported by her, as nearest cause. So untrue is it that greater perfection of activity can remove the fact of creation, though the more perfect a thing is, the more it proclaims and...