Page - 820 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: The reversal which takes place from time to time of the motion of the universe. YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that the cause? STRANGER: Of all changes of the heavenly motions, we may consider this to be the greatest and most complete. YOUNG SOCRATES: I should imagine so. STRANGER: And it may be supposed to result in the greatest changes to the human beings who are the inhabitants of the world at the time. YOUNG SOCRATES: Such changes would naturally occur. STRANGER: And animals, as we know, survive with difficulty great and serious changes of many different kinds when they come upon them at once. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: Hence there necessarily occurs a great destruction of them, which extends also to the life of man; few survivors of the race are left, and those who remain become the subjects of several novel and remarkable phenomena, and of one in particular, which takes place at the time when the transition is made to the cycle opposite to that in which we are now living. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it? STRANGER: The life of all animals first came to a standstill, and the mortal nature ceased to be or look older, and was then reversed and grew young and delicate; the white locks of the aged darkened again, and the cheeks the bearded man became smooth, and recovered their former bloom; the bodies of youths in their prime grew softer and smaller, continually by day and night returning and becoming assimilated to the nature of a newly-born child in mind as well as body; in the succeeding stage they wasted away and wholly disappeared. And the bodies of those who died by violence at that time quickly passed through the like changes, and in a few days were no more seen. YOUNG SOCRATES: Then how, Stranger, were the animals created in those days; and in what way were they begotten of one another? STRANGER: It is evident, Socrates, that there was no such thing in the then order of nature as the procreation of animals from one another; the earth- born race, of which we hear in story, was the one which existed in those days —they rose again from the ground; and of this tradition, which is now-a-days often unduly discredited, our ancestors, who were nearest in point of time to the end of the last period and came into being at the beginning of this, are to us the heralds. And mark how consistent the sequel of the tale is; after the 820