Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers (27-28)

On these points it is not necessary to discourse any longer in this place. For whatever cause a man supposes shall produce such passions and changes, that very cause will contain each of these worlds in itself; because each of them has its sea and land, each its proper middle, and each its passions and change of bodies, and the nature and power which contain and preserve each in its place and being. For that which is without, whether it be nothing at all or an infinite vacuum, cannot allow any middle, as we have already said. But there being several worlds, each has its proper middle apart; so that in each of them there will be motions proper to bodies, some tending down to the midst, others mounting aloft from the midst, others moving round about it, according as they

themselves do distinguish motions. And he who asserts there are many middles, and that heavy bodies from all sides do tend unto one alone, is like to him who shall affirm that the blood of several men runs from all parts into one vein, or that all their brains should be contained within one and the same membrane; supposing it absurd, that all natural bodies which are solid should not be in one place, and the rare in another. He that thus thinketh is certainly a mean philosopher; and no better is he who will not allow the whole to have all parts in their order, rank, and natural situation. What could be more foolish, than for a man to call that a world which had a moon within it so situated, as if a man should have his brains in his heels, and his heart in his forehead? Whereas there is no absurdity or inconveniency, if, in supposing several distinct worlds separated from one another, a man should distinguish and separate their parts. For in each of them the earth, sea, and sky will be placed and situated in their proper places, and each of these worlds may have its superior, inferior, circular, and middle part, not in respect of another world, nor in reference to what is without, but to what is within itself.

And as to the argument which some do draw from a stone supposed to be placed without the world, it neither proves rest nor motion; for how could it remain suspended, seeing it is by nature heavy, or move towards the midst of the world, as other ponderous bodies, seeing it is neither part of it nor like it? And as to that earth which is fixed and environed by another world, we must not wonder, considering its weightiness, if it does not drop down, seeing it is upheld by a certain natural force pertaining to it. For if we shall take high and low not within the world but without, we shall find ourselves involved in the same difficulties as Epicurus was when he made his little indivisible atoms to move and tend to those places

which are under foot, as if the vacuum had feet, or its infinite space would permit one to talk of high or low. Indeed, a man would marvel what should cause Chrysippus to say, that the world was placed and situated directly in the midst, and that the matter thereof, from all eternity having possessed itself of the midst, yet is so compacted together that it remains for ever. For he writes this in his Fourth Book of Possible Things, vainly imagining there is a middle in that vast emptiness, and still more absurdly attributing unto that middle, which is not, the cause of the world’s stability and continuance; he having often said in other writings of his that the substance is upheld and governed, partly by the motions tending to the midst of it, and partly by others parting from the midst of it.