and things are also termed hard and soft relatively to one
another. That which yields has a small base; but that which rests on
quadrangular bases is firmly posed and belongs to the class which offers
the greatest resistance; so too does that which is the most compact and
therefore most repellent. The nature of the light and the heavy will be
best understood when examined in connexion with our notions of above and
below; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that the universe is parted
into two regions, separate from and opposite to each other, the one
a lower to which all things tend which have any bulk, and an upper to
which things only ascend against their will. For as the universe is in
the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidistant from the
centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which is equidistant
from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite of them all. Such
being the nature of the world, when a person says that any of these
points is above or below, may he not be justly charged with using an
improper expression? For the centre of the world cannot be rightly
called either above or below, but is the centre and nothing else; and
the circumference is not the centre, and has in no one part of itself a
different relation to the centre from what it has in any of the opposite
parts. Indeed, when it is in every direction similar, how can one
rightly give to it names which imply opposition? For if there were any
solid body in equipoise at the centre of the universe, there would be
nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they are
all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the world in
a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes of his former
position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was
saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe
as having one part above and another below is not like a sensible man.
The reason why these names are used, and the circumstances under which
they are ordinarily applied by us to the division of the heavens, may be
elucidated by the following supposition:--if a person were to stand
in that part of the universe which is the appointed place of fire, and
where there is the great mass of fire to which fiery bodies gather--if,
I say, he were to ascend thither, and, having the power to do this, were
to abstract particles of fire and put them in scales and weigh them, and
then, rai