What to Plato seems the truest he thus declares, that there is one
world, and that world is the universe; and this he endeavors to
evince by three arguments. First, that the world could not be
complete and perfect, if it did not within itself include all
beings. Secondly, nor could it give the true resemblance of its
original and exemplar, if it were not the one only begotten thing.
Thirdly, it could not be incorruptible, if there were any being out
of its compass to whose power it might be obnoxious. But to Plato
it may be thus returned. First, that the world is not complete and
perfect, nor doth it contain all things within itself. And if man
is a perfect being, yet he doth not encompass all things.
Secondly, that there are many exemplars and originals of statues,
houses, and pictures. Thirdly, how is the world perfect, if
anything beyond it is possible to be moved about it? But the world
is not incorruptible, nor can it be so conceived, because it had
an original.

To Metrodorus it seems absurd, that in a large field one only
stalk should grow, and in an infinite space one only world exist;
and that this universe is infinite is manifest by this, that there
is an infinity of causes. Now if this world be finite and the
causes producing it infinite, it follows that the worlds likewise
be infinite; for where all causes concur, there the effects also
must appear, let the causes be what they will, either atoms
or elements.



CHAPTER VI.