iscourse is of love, and love is of beauty inherent
in a body? Now beauty, by similitude to things divine, moves and reminds
the soul. Or it may be (without too much curiosity) he may be understood
in plain meaning, to wit, that the several faculties of the soul being
employed about bodies, the power of reasoning and understanding partakes
most about divine and heavenly things; which he did not improperly call
a wing, it raising the soul from mean and mortal things to things above.

QUESTION VII. IN WHAT SENSE DOES PLATO SAY, THAT THE ANTIPERISTASIS (OR
REACTION) OF MOTION--BY REASON THERE IS NO VACUUM--IS THE CAUSE OF THE
PHENOMENA IN PHYSICIANS' CUPPING-GLASSES, IN SWALLOWING, IN CASTING
WEIGHTS, IN THE RUNNING OF WATER, IN THUNDER, IN THE ATTRACTION OF THE
LOADSTONE, AND IN THE HARMONY OF SOUNDS? (See "Timaeus," pp. 79-81.)

For it seems unreasonable to ascribe the reason of such different
effects to the selfsame cause.

How respiration is made by the reaction of the air, he has sufficiently
shown. But the others, he says, seem to be effected miraculously, but
really the bodies force each other aside and change places with one
another; while he has left for us to discover how each is particularly
done.

As to cupping-glasses, the case is thus: the air next to the flesh being
comprehended and inflamed by the heat, and being made more rare than
the pores of the brass, does not go into a vacuum (for there is no such
thing), but into the air that is without the cupping-glass, and has an
impulse upon it. This air drives that before it; and each, as it gives
way, strives to succeed into the place which was vacuated by the cession
of the first. And so the air approaching the flesh comprehended by
the cupping-glass, and attracting it, draws the humors into the
cupping-glass.

Swallowing takes place in the same way. For the cavities about the mouth
and stomach are full of air; when therefore the meat is squeezed down by
the tongue and tonsils, the elided air follows what gives way, and also
forces down the meat.

Weights also thrown cleave the air and dissipate it, as they fall with
force; the air recoiling back, according to its proper tendency to rush
in and fill the vacuum, follows the impulse, and accelerates the motion.

The fall also of thunderbolts is like to darting anything. For by the
blow in the cloud, the fiery matter exploded breaks into the air; and it
being broken gives way, and again being contracte