Concerning the Face which Appears in the Orb Of the Moon (12)

All the same, let us assume, if you please, that

the motions of earthy objects in the heaven are contrary to nature; and then let us calmly observe without any histrionics and quite dispassionately that this indicates not that the moon is not earth but that she is earth in an unnatural location. For the fire of Aetna too is below earth unnaturally, but it is fire; and the air confined in skins,[*] though by nature it is light and has an upward tendency, has been constrained to occupy an unnatural location. As to the soul herself, I said, by Zeus, is her confinement in the body not contrary to nature, swift as she is and fiery, as you say,[*] and invisible in a sluggish, cold, and sensible vehicle? Shall we then on this account deny that there is soul in body or that mind, a divine thing, though it traverses instantaneously in its flight all heaven and earth and sea,[*] has passed into flesh and wines and marrow under the influence of weight and density and countless qualities that attend liquefaction?[*] This Zeus of yours too, is it not true that, while in his own nature he is single, a great and continuous fire, at present he is slackened and subdued and transformed, having become and continuing to become everything in the course of his mutations?[*] So look out and reflect, good sir, lest in rearranging and removing each thing to its natural location you contrive a dissolution of the cosmos and bring upon things the Strife of Empedocles — or rather lest you arouse against nature the ancient Titans and Giants[*] and long to look upon that legendary and dreadful disorder and discord [when you have separated] all that is heavy and [all] that is light.

The suns bright aspect is not there descried, No, nor the shaggy might of earth, nor sea

as Empedocles says.[*] Earth had no part in heat, water no part in air; there was not anything heavy above or anything light below; but the principles of all things[*] were untempered and unamiable[*] and solitary, not accepting combination or association with one another, but avoiding and shunning one another and moving with their own peculiar and arbitrary motions[*] they were in the state in which, according to Plato,[*] everything is from which God is absent, that is to say in which bodies are when mind or soul is wanting. So they were until desire came over nature providentially, for Affection arose or Aphrodite or Eros, as Empedocles says and Parmenides and Hesiod,[*] in order that by changing position and interchanging functions and by being constrained some to motion and some to rest and compelled to give way and shift from the natural to the better [the bodies] might produce a universal concord and community.