This terror, then, and darkness of the mind Must needs be scattered not by the sun’s beams And day’s bright arrows, but by contemplation Of nature’s aspect and her inward law. And this first principle of her design Shall be our starting point: nothing is ever By divine will begotten out of nothing. In truth the reason fear so dominates All mortals, is that they behold on earth And in the sky many things happening, Yet of these operations by no means Can they perceive the causes, and so fancy That they must come to pass by power divine. Therefore when we have understood that nothing Can be born out of nothing, we shall then Win juster knowledge of the truth we seek, Both from what elements each thing can be formed, And in what way all things can come to pass Without the intervention of the gods. For if things came from nothing, any kind Might be born out of anything; naught then Would require seed. Thus men might rise from ocean The scaly race out of the land, while birds Might suddenly be hatched forth from the sky: Cattle and other herds and every kind Of wild beast, bred by no fixed law of birth, Would roam o’er tilth and wilderness alike. No fruit would remain constant to its tree, But would change; every tree would bear all kinds. For if there were not for each thing its own Begetting particles, how could they have A fixed unvarying mother? But in fact Since all are formed from fixed seeds, each is born And issues into the borders of the light From that alone wherein resides its substance And its first bodies. And for this cause all things Cannot be generated out of all, Since in each dwells its own particular power. Again why do we see in spring the rose, Corn in the summer’s heat, vines bursting forth When autumn summons them, if not because When in their own time the fixed seeds of things Have flowed together, there is then revealed Whatever has been born, while the due seasons Are present, and the quickened earth brings forth Safely into the borders of the light Its tender nurslings? But if they were formed From nothing, they would suddenly spring up At unfixed periods and hostile times, Since there would then be no fixed particles To be kept from a begetting union By the unpropitious season of the year. Nor yet after the meeting of the seed Would lapse of time be needed for their increase, If they could grow from nothing. Suddenly Small babes would become youths; trees would arise Shooting up in a moment from the ground. But nothing of the kind, ’tis plain, takes place, Seeing that all things grow little by little, As befits, from determined seed, and growing Preserve their kind: so that you may perceive That all things become greater and are nourished Out of their own material.