les of Miletus pronounced for water as the
primordial element in all things; Heraclitus, for fire; the priests of
the Magi, for water and fire; Euripides, a pupil of Anaxagoras, and
called by the Athenians "the philosopher of the stage," for air and
earth. Earth, he held, was impregnated by the rains of heaven and, thus
conceiving, brought forth the young of mankind and of all the living
creatures in the world; whatever is sprung from her goes back to her
again when the compelling force of time brings about a dissolution; and
whatever is born of the air returns in the same way to the regions of
the sky; nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a
change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were
before. But Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epicharmus, and other physicists and
philosophers have set forth that the primordial elements are four in
number: air, fire, earth, and water; and that it is from their coherence
to one another under the moulding power of nature that the qualities of
things are produced according to different classes.

2. And, in fact, we see not only that all which comes to birth is
produced by them, but also that nothing can be nourished without their
influence, nor grow, nor be preserved. The body, for example, can have
no life without the flow of the breath to and fro, that is, unless an
abundance of air flows in, causing dilations and contractions in regular
succession. Without the right proportion of heat, the body will lack
vitality, will not be well set up, and will not properly digest strong
food. Again, without the fruits of the earth to nourish the bodily
frame, it will be enfeebled, and so lose its admixture of the earthy
element.

3. Finally, without the influence of moisture, living creatures will be
bloodless and, having the liquid element sucked out of them, will
wither away. Accordingly the divine intelligence has not made what is
really indispensable for man either hard to get or costly, like pearls,
gold, silver, and so forth, the lack of which neither our body nor our
nature feels, but has spread abroad, ready to hand through all the
world, the things without which the life of mortals cannot be
maintained. Thus, to take examples, suppose there is a deficiency of
breath in the body, the air, to which is assigned the function of making
up the deficiency, performs that service. To supply heat, the mighty sun
is ready, and the invention of fire makes life