[215]The argument appears to be that, as on a small scale design is “evident in the construction or repairing of a thing but is absent in its decay,” so the orderly creation and maintenance of the Universe on the large scale implies intelligent direction.
[216]Hesiod (_Works and Days_, 554) is meant, but of course 100 stands here, as elsewhere, for an indefinitely large number.
[217]The point is that movement which is useful suggests design: but as the movement of the atoms is without design, it cannot be useful.
[218]Ps. cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 16. Dionysius quotes the best text here of LXX, but his application is rather obscure. Apparently he means that the Epicureans claimed to know without either revelation or research what the Psalmist knew only by revelation from God.
[219]Dionysius says that even the spider has more notion of design than the atoms, but the sarcasm is not quite to the point.
[221]“God ever brings like to like.”—Homer, _Od._ xvii. 218, a proverb quoted both by Plato and Aristotle.
[222]Dionysius is probably thinking of Plato’s _Timæus_ 56B, where the pyramid is said to be the geometrical shape of fire which is the principal constituent of the bodies of the stars (Professor H. Jackson).
[223]Dionysius is here referring to such a passage as Gen. i. 6 ff. No doubt the ancients thought the vault of heaven was solid, enclosing the atmosphere which covers the earth, and that the stars were either fixed upon it or moved in their courses on its surface.
[225]_i. e._ the sun’s yearly (as opposed to its daily) course.
[226]“The righteous” here is a very unusual equivalent for “the Christians”: it is possible, however, that the translation is: “however much these men disagree, being but poor creatures, though righteous enough in their own estimate.”
[228]The idea is of some stars being solitary, like a Greek or Roman colony (ἀποικία) with a constitution of its own, and of others grouping themselves into constellations or communities (συνοικία). The colony had a founder (οἰκιστής), the community or household would have some sort of controller (οἰκοδεσπότης).
[230]The natural motion of atoms was downwards, but there was also a slight sideward motion, and when they impinged a motion upwards by blows and tossings, and this produced the shape of things. But Dionysius here says, how is that theory consistent with the orderly march of the stars?