• For explanation. First, then, when he speaks Of this homéomería of things, he thinks Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute, And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh, And blood created out of drops of blood, Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold, And earth concreted out of bits of earth, Fire made of fires, and water out of waters, Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff. Yet he concedes not any void in things, Nor any limit to cutting bodies down. Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts To err no less than those we named before. Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail— If they be germs primordial furnished forth. With but same nature as the things themselves, And travail and perish equally with those, And no rein curbs them from annihilation. For which will last against the grip and crush Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist? Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones? No one, methinks, when every thing will be At bottom as mortal as whate'er we mark To perish by force before our gazing eyes. But my appeal is to the proofs above That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet From naught increase. And now again, since food Augments and nourishes the human frame, 'Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones And thews are formed of particles unlike To them in kind; or if they say all foods Are of mixed substance having in themselves Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins And particles of blood, then every food, Solid or liquid, must itself be thought