h and struck one
another, and forced the lighter upwards, did cease, and there was no
farther power left to drive them into superior regions, yet they were
wholly hindered from descending downwards, and were compelled to reside
in those places capable to receive them; and these were the heavenly
spaces, unto which a multitude of these small bodies were hurled, and
these being thus shivered fell into coherence and mutual embraces,
and by this means the heaven was produced. Then a various and great
multitude of atoms enjoying the same nature, as it is before asserted,
being hurried aloft, did form the stars. The multitude of these exhaled
bodies, having struck and broke the air in shivers, forced a passage
through it; this being turned into wind invested the stars, as it
moved, and whirled them about, by which means to this present time that
circulary motion which these stars have in the heavens is maintained.
Much after the same manner the earth was made; for by those little
particles whose gravity made them to reside in the lower places the
earth was formed. The heaven, fire, and air were constituted of those
particles which were carried aloft. But a great deal of matter remaining
in the earth, this being condensed by the driving of the winds and the
air from the stars, every little part and form of it was compressed,
which created the element of water; but this being fluidly disposed did
run into those places which were hollow, and these places were those
that were capable to receive and protect it; or the water, subsisting
by itself, did make the lower places hollow. After this manner the
principal parts of the world were constituted.

CHAPTER V. WHETHER THE UNIVERSE IS ONE SINGLE THING.

The Stoics pronounce that the world is one thing, and this they say is
the universe and is corporeal.

But Empedocles's opinion is, that the world is one; yet by no means the
system of this world must be styled the universe, but that it is a small
part of it, and the remainder is inactive matter.

What to Plato seems the truest he thus declares, that there is one
world, and that world is the universe; and this he endeavors to evince
by three arguments. First, that the world could not be complete and
perfect, if it did not within itself include all beings. Secondly, nor
could it give the true resemblance of its original and exemplar, if
it were not the one only begotten thing. Thirdly, it could not be
incorruptible, if there w