על שהאל הוא ללא שינוי ח׳On the Unchangeableness of God 8
א׳
1[37] Growth God assigned to plants. It is a compound of many capacities, that of taking nourishment, that of undergoing change and that of increasing. Nourishment plants receive as they need it, as the following proof shews. When they are not watered they decay and wither, just as their increase when watered is plain to see, for sprouts heretofore too tiny to rise above the ground suddenly shoot up and become quite tall. It is hardly necessary to speak of their function of change.
ב׳
2[38] When the winter solstice arrives, the leaves wither and shed themselves to the ground, and the “eyes,” as the husbandmen call them, on the twigs close like eyes in animals, and all the outlets which serve to put forth life are bound tight, for Nature within them compresses herself and hibernates, to get a breathing-space, like an athlete after his first contest, and thus having regained her fund of strength, comes forth to resume the familiar conflict. And this comes to pass in the spring and summer seasons.
ג׳
3[39] For she arises as though from a deep sleep and unseals the eyes, opens wide the closed outlets, and brings forth all that is in her womb, shoots, twigs, tendrils, leaves and, to crown all, fruit. Then when the fruit is fully formed, she provides nourishment, like the mother to the infant, through some hidden channels, which correspond to the breasts in women, and she ceases not to minister this nourishment till the fruit is brought to its consummation.
ד׳
4[40] That consummation comes to the fully ripened fruit, when, if none pluck it, it automatically seeks to disengage itself from its organism, since it needs no longer the nurture which its parent supplies, and is capable, if it chance to drop on good soil, of sowing and producing other plants similar to those which gave it its existence.