ee or
olive-tree was made of the seed, he would not be much out; for the body,
its innate motion and mutation proceeding from the seed, grew up and
became what it is. So, when formless and indefinite matter was once
formed by the inbeing soul, it received such a form and disposition.

QUESTION V. WHY, SINCE BODIES AND FIGURES ARE CONTAINED PARTLY BY
RECTILINEARS AND PARTLY BY CIRCLES, DOES HE MAKE ISOSCELES TRIANGLES AND
TRIANGLES OF UNEQUAL SIDES THE PRINCIPLES OF RECTILINEARS; OF WHICH THE
ISOSCELES TRIANGLE CONSTITUTES THE CUBE, THE ELEMENT OF THE EARTH; AND A
SCALENE TRIANGLE FORMS THE PYRAMID, THE OCTAHEDRON THE SEED OF FIRE,
AIR AND WATER RESPECTIVELY, AND THE ICOSAHEDRON;--WHILE HE PASSES OVER
CIRCULARS, THOUGH HE DOES MENTION THE GLOBE, WHERE HE SAYS THAT EACH OF
THE AFORE-RECKONED FIGURES DIVIDES A ROUND BODY THAT CIRCUMSCRIBES IT
INTO EQUAL PARTS. (See "Timaeus," pp. 53-56.)

Is their opinion true who think that he ascribed a dodecahedron to the
globe, when he says that God made use of it in delineating the universe?
For upon account of the multitude of its bases and the obtuseness of its
angles, avoiding all rectitude, it is flexible, and by circumtension,
like globes made of twelve skins, it becomes circular and comprehensive.
For it has twenty solid angles, each of which is contained by three
obtuse planes, and each of these contains one and the fifth part of
a right angle. Now it is made up of twelve equilateral and equangular
quinquangles (or pentagons), each of which consists of thirty of the
first scalene triangles. Therefore it seems to resemble both the Zodiac
and the year, it being divided into the same number of parts as these.

Or is a right line in Nature prior to circumference; or is circumference
but an accident of rectilinear? For a right line is said to bend; and
a circle is described by a centre and distance, which is the place of a
right line from which a circumference is measured, this being everywhere
equally distant from the middle. And a cone and a cylinder are made
by rectilinears; a cone by keeping one side of a triangle fixed and
carrying another round with the base,--a cylinder, by doing the like
with a parallelogram. Further, that is nearest to principle which is
less; but a right is the least of all lines, as it is simple; whereas
in a circumference one part is convex without, another concave within.
Besides, numbers are before figures, as unity is before a point,
which is un