but that either there are numberless worlds, or that one and
the same world is perpetually resolved into its elements, and
renewed at the conclusion of fixed cycles._
There are some, again, who, though they do not suppose that this
world is eternal, are of opinion either that this is not the only
world, but that there are numberless worlds, or that indeed it is the
only one, but that it dies, and is born again at fixed intervals,
and this times without number;[536] but they must acknowledge that
the human race existed before there were other men to beget them.
For they cannot suppose that, if the whole world perish, some men
would be left alive in the world, as they might survive in floods and
conflagrations, which those other speculators suppose to be partial,
and from which they can therefore reasonably argue that a few men
survived whose posterity would renew the population; but as they
believe that the world itself is renewed out of its own material,
so they must believe that out of its elements the human race was
produced, and then that the progeny of mortals sprang like that of
other animals from their parents.