grain is shaken and winnowed by fans and other instruments used in
the threshing of corn, the close and heavy particles are borne away and
settle in one direction, and the loose and light particles in another.
In this manner, the four kinds or elements were then shaken by the
receiving vessel, which, moving like a winnowing machine, scattered
far away from one another the elements most unlike, and forced the most
similar elements into close contact. Wherefore also the various elements
had different places before they were arranged so as to form the
universe. At first, they were all without reason and measure. But when
the world began to get into order, fire and water and earth and air had
only certain faint traces of themselves, and were altogether such as
everything might be expected to be in the absence of God; this, I
say, was their nature at that time, and God fashioned them by form and
number. Let it be consistently maintained by us in all that we say that
God made them as far as possible the fairest and best, out of things
which were not fair and good. And now I will endeavour to show you the
disposition and generation of them by an unaccustomed argument, which I
am compelled to use; but I believe that you will be able to follow me,
for your education has made you familiar with the methods of science.

In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth and water
and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses solidity, and
every solid must necessarily be contained in planes; and every plane
rectilinear figure is composed of triangles; and all triangles are
originally of two kinds, both of which are made up of one right and two
acute angles; one of them has at either end of the base the half of a
divided right angle, having equal sides, while in the other the right
angle is divided into unequal parts, having unequal sides. These, then,
proceeding by a combination of probability with demonstration, we
assume to be the original elements of fire and the other bodies; but the
principles which are prior to these God only knows, and he of men who is
the friend of God. And next we have to determine what are the four most
beautiful bodies which are unlike one another, and of which some are
capable of resolution into one another; for having discovered thus much,
we shall know the true origin of earth and fire and of the proportionate
and intermediate elements. And then we shall not be willing to allow
that t