Ocellus Lucanus: On the Nature of the Universe. Taurus, the Platonic Philosoher, On the Eternity of the World. Julius Firmicus Maternus Of the Thema Mundi; in which the Positions of the Stars at the Commencement of the Several Mundane Periods is Given. Select Theorems on the Perpetuity of Time, by Proelus

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translator, 1831 - Science - 95 pages

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Page 77 - The different periods in which these mutations happen are called by Plato, with great propriety, periods of fertility and sterility; for in these periods a fertility or sterility of men, irrational animals, and plants takes place; so that in fertile periods mankind will be both more numerous, and upon the whole superior in mental and bodily endowments, to the men of a barren period. And a similar reasoning must be extended to animals and plants. The so much celebrated heroic age was the result of...
Page 72 - Believe me, likewise, that a capital punishment shall be appointed for him who applies himself to the religion of intellect. New statutes and new laws shall be established, and nothing religious, or which is worthy of heaven or celestial concerns, shall be heard or believed by the mind. There will be a lamentable departure of the Gods from men; noxious angels...
Page 77 - ... according to, and sometimes contrary to nature. Hence the celestial bodies, which are the first parts of the universe, perpetually subsist according to nature, both the whole spheres, and the multitude co-ordinate to these wholes*; and the only alteration which they experience is a mutation of figure, and variation of light at different periods : but in the sublunary region, while the spheres of...
Page 27 - See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving vegetate again : All forms that perish other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die) Like bubbles on the sea of matter born, They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Page 48 - Necepso (a), who deserve all possible admiration, and whose wisdom approached to the very penetralia of Deity, scientifically delivered to us the geniture of the world, that they might demonstrate and show that man was fashioned conformably to the nature and similitude of the world...
Page 73 - These events and such an old age of the world as this shall take place, such irreligion, inordination, and unreasonableness of all good. When all these things shall happen, O Asclepius, then that lord and father, the God who is first in power, and the one governor of the world, looking into the manners and voluntary deeds [of men,] and by his will, which is the benignity of God, resisting vices, and recalling the error arising from the corruption of all things; washing away likewise all malignity...
Page 54 - Sun tends to one and the same point (SW«»r«), for his restitution is from the same to the same, — in like manner there is an arrangement of all the planets effected in long periods of time, which produces the great year. For if all the planets becoming vertical, heat in the same manner as the sun, but departing from this vertical position refrigerate, it is not unreasonable to suppose, that when they become vertical, they produce a great summer, but when they have departed from this position,...
Page 53 - Lest, however, the fabulous device* of these men should deceive you, and lest some one should think that this geniture of the world was contrived by these most wise men, without a cause, it is requisite that we should explain all things particularly, in order that the great sagacity displayed in this device, may, by the most diligent expositions, be intimated to all men. " The world had not a certain day of its origin, nor was there any time in which the world was formed by the counsel of a divine...
Page 78 - ... place ; so that in fertile periods mankind will be both more numerous, and upon the whole, superior in mental and bodily endowments, to the men of a barren period. And a similar reasoning must be extended to animals and plants. The so much celebrated heroic age was the result of one of these fertile periods, in which men, transcending the herd of mankind, both in practical and intellectual virtue, abounded on the earth.

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