CHAPTER V.

Concerning the Death of the Elements, especially of Water.
Elements die, as men die, on account of the corruption in them. As water at its death, as it were, consumes and devours its own fruit, so does the earth its own fruits. Whatever is born from it returns to it again, is swallowed up and lost, just as the time past is swallowed up by yesterday's days and nights, the light or darkness of which we shall never see again. It is no weightier to-day than yesterday, not even by a single grain, and will after a thousand years be of the same weight still. As it gives forth, so, in the same degree, it consumes. The death of the water, however, is in its own proper element, in that great terminus and centre of water, the sea, wherein the rivers, and what- ever else flows into it, die and are consumed as wood in the fire. Rivers, indeed, are not the element of water, but the fruit of that element, which is the sea ; trom this they derive their origin, and in this they receive both their life and their death.