DIADUMENUS. Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more and greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature in all animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small, slender, and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest. For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that seed is in Greek called σπέρμα, as it were, the σπείρασις or the coiling up of a great mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name of φύσις, as if it were the inflation (ἐμφύσησις) and diffusion of reason and numbers opened and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this, they maintain that fire is the seed of the world, which shall after the conflagration change into seed the world, which will then have a copious nature from a smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite space of vacuum filled by its increase; and the world being made, the size again recedes and settles, the matter being after the generation gathered and contracted into itself.