nd last, and the first and last both
becoming means, they will all of them of necessity come to be the same,
and having become the same with one another will be all one. If the
universal frame had been created a surface only and having no depth, a
single mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the other
terms; but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies are always
compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed water and air in the
mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the same proportion
so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is air to water, and as air
is to water so is water to earth); and thus he bound and put together
a visible and tangible heaven. And for these reasons, and out of such
elements which are in number four, the body of the world was created,
and it was harmonized by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of
friendship; and having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by
the hand of any other than the framer.

Now the creation took up the whole of each of the four elements; for the
Creator compounded the world out of all the fire and all the water and
all the air and all the earth, leaving no part of any of them nor any
power of them outside. His intention was, in the first place, that
the animal should be as far as possible a perfect whole and of perfect
parts: secondly, that it should be one, leaving no remnants out of which
another such world might be created: and also that it should be free
from old age and unaffected by disease. Considering that if heat and
cold and other powerful forces which unite bodies surround and attack
them from without when they are unprepared, they decompose them, and by
bringing diseases and old age upon them, make them waste away--for this
cause and on these grounds he made the world one whole, having every
part entire, and being therefore perfect and not liable to old age and
disease. And he gave to the world the figure which was suitable and also
natural. Now to the animal which was to comprehend all animals, that
figure was suitable which comprehends within itself all other figures.
Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a
lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the
centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he
considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he
finished off, making the surface smooth all round for many