Message #168421

[Bathos]

We must now consider the facts which prove that the sea cannot possibly
have springs. The waters we find on the earth either flow or are stationary.
All flowing water has springs. (By a spring, as we have explained
above, we must not understand a source from which waters are ladled
as it were from a vessel, but a first point at which the water which
is continually forming and percolating gathers.) Stationary water
is either that which has collected and has been left standing, marshy
pools, for instance, and lakes, which differ merely in size, or else
it comes from springs. In this case it is always artificial, I mean
as in the case of wells, otherwise the spring would have to be above
the outlet. Hence the water from fountains and rivers flows of itself,
whereas wells need to be worked artificially. All the waters that
exist belong to one or other of these classes.

On the basis of this division we can sec that the sea cannot have
springs. For it falls under neither of the two classes; it does not
flow and it is not artificial; whereas all water from springs must
belong to one or other of them. Natural standing water from springs
is never found on such a large scale.

Again, there are several seas that have no communication with one
another at all. The Red Sea, for instance, communicates but slightly
with the ocean outside the straits, and the Hyrcanian and Caspian
seas are distinct from this ocean and people dwell all round them.
Hence, if these seas had had any springs anywhere they must have been
discovered.

It is true that in straits, where the land on either side contracts
an open sea into a small space, the sea appears to flow. But this
is because it is swinging to and fro. In the open sea this motion
is not observed, but where the land narrows and contracts the sea
the motion that was imperceptible in the open necessarily strikes
the attention.