Page:Thoughts on art and life.djvu/60

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eyes, and look again : that which you see was not there before, and that which was, no longer is. Who is he who remakes it if the producer is continually dying?

65. Anaxagoras: Everything proceeds from every- thing, and everything becomes everything, be- cause that which exists in the elements is com- posed of those elements.

66. Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the pity- ing mother.

67. Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of the other? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in continually cre- ating and making lives and forms, because she knows that her earthly materials are thereby aug- mented, is more willing and swift to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many animals shall feed on each other. And as even thus her desire is not satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential va- pours upon the increasing multitude and congre- gation of animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent, because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause,

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