Since, too, the flame of fire is accustomed to scorch and burn up the tawny bodies of lions, as well as every kind of creature on earth that consists of flesh and blood, how was it possible that a Chimaera, one animal compounded of three bodies, the fore part a lion, the hinder a dragon, the middle a goat, could blow abroad at its mouth a fierce flame out of its body?

For which reason, he who supposes that such animals might have been produced, even when the earth was new and the air fresh, (leaning for argument only on this empty term of newness,) may babble, with equal reason, many other hypotheses of a like nature. He may say that rivers of gold then flowed everywhere over the earth, and that the groves were accustomed to blossom with jewels; or that men were formed with such power and bulk of limbs, that they could extend their steps over the deep seas, and turn the whole heaven around them with their hands. For though, at the time when the earth first produced animal life, there were innumerable seeds of things in the ground, this is yet no proof that creatures could have been generated of mixed natures, and that heterogeneous members of animals could have been blended together. Since the various kinds of herbs, and fruits, and rich groves, which even now spring up exuberantly from the earth, can nevertheless not be produced with a union of different kinds. But they can readily be produced, if each proceeds in its own order, and all preserve their distinctions according to the fixed law of nature.

And that early race of men upon the earth was much more hardy; as it was natural that they should be, for the hard earth herself bore them. They were internally sustained with bones both larger and more solid, and furnished with strong nerves throughout their bodies; nor were they a race that could easily be injured by heat or cold, or by change of food, or by any corporeal malady.

And during many lustres of the sun, revolving through the heaven, they prolonged their lives after the roving manner of wild beasts. No one was either a driver of the crooked plough, or knew how to turn up the fields with the spade, or to plant young seedlings in the earth, or to cut, with pruning-hooks, the old boughs from the lofty trees. That supply which the sun and rain had afforded, or which the earth had yielded of its own accord, sufficiently gratified their desires. They refreshed themselves, for the most part, among the acorn-laden oaks. The earth, too, then furnished abundance of whortle-berries, even larger than at present, which you now see ripen in winter, and become of a purple colour. And many rude kinds of nourishment besides, ample for hapless mortals, the florid freshness of the world in those days produced.