Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in creating and making constantly new lives and forms, because she knows that her terrestrial materials become thereby augmented, is more ready and more swift in her creating, than time in his destruction; and so she has ordained that many animals shall be food for others.
 Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1478 – 1519). copy citation

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Author Leonardo da Vinci
Source The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Topic destruction food
Date 1478 – 1519
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Jean Paul Richter in 1888
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5000/pg5000-images.html

Context

“and then its surface will be left burnt up to cinder and this will be the end of all terrestrial nature. [Footnote: Compare No. 1339, written on the same sheet.] 1219. Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of another? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in creating and making constantly new lives and forms, because she knows that her terrestrial materials become thereby augmented, is more ready and more swift in her creating, than time in his destruction; and so she has ordained that many animals shall be food for others. Nay, this not satisfying her desire, to the same end she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the vast increase and congregation of animals; and most of all upon men, who increase vastly because other animals do not feed upon them;” source