BOOK II 



I. The world and this — whatever other name The worid- 

 men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted 

 roof encircles the universe, is fitly beUeved to be a 

 deity," eternal, immeasurable, a being that never 

 began to exist and never will perish. What is out- 

 side it does not concern men to explore and is not 

 within the grasp of the human mind to guess. It is 

 sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the 

 whole, nay rather itself the whole, finite and 

 resembling the infinite,'' certain of all things and 

 resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all 

 things that are without and within, at once the work 

 of nature and nature herself. 



That certain persons have studied, and have dared ns^i^f- 

 to pubUsh, its dimensions, is mere madness ; and 

 again that others,*^ taking or receiving occasion from 

 the former, have taught the existence of a countless 

 number of worlds, involving the beUef in as many 

 systems of nature, or, if a single nature embraces 

 all the worlds, nevertheless the same number of 

 suns, moons and other unmeasurable and innumer- 

 able heavenly bodies, as already in a single world; 

 just as if owing to our craving for some End the 

 same problem would not always encounter us at 



« The founders of the atomic theory, Leucippus and 

 Democritua. 



171 



