BOOK 10 -7-2

But, if someone abandons the concept of nature and explains these things as 'just the way things are' how absurd it is to combine the assertion that the parts of the Whole are naturally subject to change with surprise or resentment as if this change was something contrary to nature - especially as the dissolution of each thing is into the elements of which it is composed. Dissolution is either a scattering of the component elements or the change of solid to earth and spirit to air, so that these too are submitted into the Reason of the Whole, whether the Whole is periodically turned to fire or renews itself though eternal mutations.