st the frost which surrounds it and attacks it from
without. He who modelled us, considering these things, mixed earth with
fire and water and blended them; and making a ferment of acid and salt,
he mingled it with them and formed soft and succulent flesh. As for
the sinews, he made them of a mixture of bone and unfermented flesh,
attempered so as to be in a mean, and gave them a yellow colour;
wherefore the sinews have a firmer and more glutinous nature than flesh,
but a softer and moister nature than the bones. With these God covered
the bones and marrow, binding them together by sinews, and then
enshrouded them all in an upper covering of flesh. The more living and
sensitive of the bones he enclosed in the thinnest film of flesh, and
those which had the least life within them in the thickest and most
solid flesh. So again on the joints of the bones, where reason indicated
that no more was required, he placed only a thin covering of flesh,
that it might not interfere with the flexion of our bodies and make them
unwieldy because difficult to move; and also that it might not, by being
crowded and pressed and matted together, destroy sensation by reason of
its hardness, and impair the memory and dull the edge of intelligence.
Wherefore also the thighs and the shanks and the hips, and the bones of
the arms and the forearms, and other parts which have no joints, and the
inner bones, which on account of the rarity of the soul in the marrow
are destitute of reason--all these are abundantly provided with flesh;
but such as have mind in them are in general less fleshy, except
where the creator has made some part solely of flesh in order to give
sensation,--as, for example, the tongue. But commonly this is not the
case. For the nature which comes into being and grows up in us by a law
of necessity, does not admit of the combination of solid bone and much
flesh with acute perceptions. More than any other part the framework
of the head would have had them, if they could have co-existed, and the
human race, having a strong and fleshy and sinewy head, would have had
a life twice or many times as long as it now has, and also more healthy
and free from pain. But our creators, considering whether they should
make a longer-lived race which was worse, or a shorter-lived race which
was better, came to the conclusion that every one ought to prefer a
shorter span of life, which was better, to a longer one, which was
worse; and therefore they