rth, and water, and air from the world, which were hereafter
to be restored--these they took and welded them together, not with the
indissoluble chains by which they were themselves bound, but with little
pegs too small to be visible, making up out of all the four elements
each separate body, and fastening the courses of the immortal soul in
a body which was in a state of perpetual influx and efflux. Now
these courses, detained as in a vast river, neither overcame nor were
overcome; but were hurrying and hurried to and fro, so that the whole
animal was moved and progressed, irregularly however and irrationally
and anyhow, in all the six directions of motion, wandering backwards
and forwards, and right and left, and up and down, and in all the six
directions. For great as was the advancing and retiring flood which
provided nourishment, the affections produced by external contact
caused still greater tumult--when the body of any one met and came
into collision with some external fire, or with the solid earth or the
gliding waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air, and the
motions produced by any of these impulses were carried through the body
to the soul. All such motions have consequently received the general
name of 'sensations,' which they still retain. And they did in fact
at that time create a very great and mighty movement; uniting with the
ever-flowing stream in stirring up and violently shaking the courses of
the soul, they completely stopped the revolution of the same by their
opposing current, and hindered it from predominating and advancing; and
they so disturbed the nature of the other or diverse, that the three
double intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8), and the three triple
intervals (i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27), together with the mean terms and
connecting links which are expressed by the ratios of 3:2, and 4:3, and
of 9:8--these, although they cannot be wholly undone except by him who
united them, were twisted by them in all sorts of ways, and the circles
were broken and disordered in every possible manner, so that when they
moved they were tumbling to pieces, and moved irrationally, at one time
in a reverse direction, and then again obliquely, and then upside
down, as you might imagine a person who is upside down and has his head
leaning upon the ground and his feet up against something in the air;
and when he is in such a position, both he and the spectator fancy that
the right of either is his l