ONE: We believe, then, that the whole heaven is one and everlasting, without beginning or end through all eternity, but holding infinite time within its orb; not, as some say, created or capable of being destroyed. We believe it on account of the grounds already stated, and also on account of the consequences resulting from a different hypothesis. For, it must add great weight to our assurance of its immortality and everlasting duration that this opinion may, while the contrary opinion cannot possibly, be true. Wherefore, we may trust the traditions of old time, and especially of our own race, when they tell us that there is something deathless and divine about the things which, although moving, have a movement that is not bounded, but is itself the universal bound, a perfect circle enclosing in its revolutions the imperfect motions that are subject to restraint and arrest; while this, being without beginning or end or rest through infinite time, is the one from which all others originate, and into which they disappear. That heaven which antiquity assigned to the gods as an immortal abode, is shown by the present argument to be uncreated and indestructible, exempt alike from mortal weakness and from the weariness of subjection to a force acting in opposition to its natural inclination; for in proportion to its everlasting continuance such a compulsion would be laborious, and unparticipant in the highest perfection of design. We must not, then, believe with the old mythologists that an Atlas is needed to uphold it; for they, like some in more recent times, fancied that the heavens were made of heavy earthy matter, and so fabled an animated necessity for their support; nor yet that, as Empedocles says, they will last only so long as their own proper momentum is exceeded by the whirling motion of which they partake.255 Nor, again, is it likely that their everlasting revolution can be kept up by the exercise of a conscious will;358 for no soul could lead a happy and blessed existence that was engaged in such a task, necessitating, as it would, an unceasing struggle with their native tendency to move in a different direction, without even the mental relaxation and bodily rest which mortals gain by sleep, but doomed to the eternal torment of an Ixions wheel. Our explanation, on the other hand, is, as we say, not only more consistent with the eternity of the heavens, but also can alone be reconciled with the acknowledged vaticinations of religious faith.256
TWO:Where no danger could deter from the pursuit of power, no balancing of pain with pleasure availed to quench the ardour of desire. With full knowledge that violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, the fateful condition was accepted. Not only did Giordano Bruno, in conscious parallelism with his theory of matter, declare that without mutation, variety, and vicissitude nothing would be agreeable, nothing good, nothing delightful, that enjoyment consists solely in transition and movement, and that all pleasure lies midway between the painful longing of fresh appetite and the sadness of its satiation and extinction;558 but the sedater wisdom of Bacon, in touching on the controversy between Callicles and Socrates, seems to incline towards the side of the former; and, in all cases, warns men not to make too much of the inconveniences attendent on pleasure, but so to procure serenity as they destroy not magnanimity.559
