e
spin of the universe as a whole keeps it in its place like the water in
a spinning cup." He has the same conception of the early condition of
the earth as in other cosmogonies. At first it was a chaos of watery
slough, which slowly, under the influence of sky and sun, parted off
into earth and sea. The sea was the 'sweat' of the earth, and by
analogy with the sweat it was salt. The heavens, on the other hand,
were formed of air and fire, and the sun was, as it were, a speculum at
which the effulgence and the heat of the whole heavens concentrated.
But that the aether and the fire had not been fully separated from
earth and water he held to be proved by the hot fountains and fiery
phenomena which must have been so familiar to a native of Sicily.
Curiously enough he imagined fire to possess a solidifying power, and
therefore attributed to it the solidity of the earth and the hardness
of the rocks. No doubt he had observed some effects of fire in
'metamorphic' formations in his own vicinity.

{70}

[137]

He had also a conception of the gradual development on the earth of
higher and higher forms of life, the first being rude and imperfect,
and a 'struggle for existence' ensuing in which the monstrous and the
deficient gradually were eliminated--the "two-faced, the
double-breasted, the oxen-shaped with human prows, or human-shaped with
head of ox, or hemaphrodite," and so forth. Love and Strife worked out
their ends upon these varied forms; some procreated and reproduced
after their image, others were incapable of reproduction from mere
monstrosity or [138] weakness, and disappeared. Something other than
mere chance thus governed the development of things; there was a law, a
reason, a _Logos_ governing the process. This law or reason he perhaps
fancifully illustrated by attributing the different characters of flesh
and sinew and bone to the different numerical proportions, in which
they severally contain the different elements.

On this Aristotle, keen-scented critic as he was, has a question, or
series of questions, to ask as to the relation between this Logos, or
principle of orderly combination, and Love as the ruling force in all
unions of things. "Is Love," he asks, "a cause of mixtures of any
sort, or only of such sorts as Logos dictates? And whether then is
Love identical with this Logos, or are they separate and distinct; and
if so, what settles their separate functions?" Questions {71} which
Empe