Message #168383

[Bathos]

Part 2

We have already laid down that there is one physical element which
makes up the system of the bodies that move in a circle, and besides
this four bodies owing their existence to the four principles, the
motion of these latter bodies being of two kinds: either from the
centre or to the centre. These four bodies are fire, air, water, earth.
Fire occupies the highest place among them all, earth the lowest,
and two elements correspond to these in their relation to one another,
air being nearest to fire, water to earth. The whole world surrounding
the earth, then, the affections of which are our subject, is made
up of these bodies. This world necessarily has a certain continuity
with the upper motions: consequently all its power and order is derived
from them. (For the originating principle of all motion is the first
cause. Besides, that clement is eternal and its motion has no limit
in space, but is always complete; whereas all these other bodies have
separate regions which limit one another.) So we must treat fire and
earth and the elements like them as the material causes of the events
in this world (meaning by material what is subject and is affected),
but must assign causality in the sense of the originating principle
of motion to the influence of the eternally moving bodies.