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THE SECOND BOOKE 325
worke, and that by consequence he is subject unto
change. In the most famous schooles of Greece, the
world is reputed a God framed by another greater and
mightier God, and is composed of a body and a soule,
which abideth in his centre, spreading it selfe by
musicall numbers unto his circumference, divine, thricehappy,
very great, most wise and eternall. In it are
other Gods, as the sea, the earth, and planets, which
mutually entertaine one another with an harmonious
and perpetuall agitation and celestiall dance; sometime
meeting, other times farre-sundering themselves;
now hiding, then shewing themselves; and changing
place, now forward, now backward. Heraclitus firmly
maintained that the world was composed of fire, and
by the destinies order it should one day burst forth
into flames, and be so consumed into cinders, and
another day it should be new borne againe. And
Apuleius of men saith: Sigillatim mortales; cunctim
perpetui: 1 ' Severally mortall; altogether everlasting.'
Alexander writ unto his mother the narration of an
AEgyptian priest, drawne from out their monuments,
witnessing the antiquitie of that nation, infinite;
and comprehending the birth and progresse of their
countries to the life. Cicero and Diodorus said in
their daies that the Chaldeans kept a register of foure
hundred thousand and odde yeares; Aristotle, Plinie,
and others, that Zoroaster lived sixe thousand yeares
before Plato. And Plato saith that those of the citty
of Sais have memories in writing of eight thousand
yeares, and that the towne of Athens was built a
thousand yeares before the citty of Sais. Epicurus,
that at one same time all things that are looke how
we see them, they are all alike, and in the same
fashion, in divers other Worlds, which he would have
spoken more confidently had he seene the similitudes
and correspondencies of this new-found world of the
West Indiaes with ours, both present and past, by so
many strange examples. Truly, when I consider what
hath followed our learning by the course of this
1 L. APUL. De Deo; SOCRAT.