e puts the aether and the
fire in the same place. Aristotle gives the first place to the aether,
as that which is impassible, it being a kind of a fifth body after which
he placeth those that are passible, fire, air, and water, and last of
all the earth. To those bodies that are accounted celestial he assigns
a motion that is circular, but to those that are seated under them,
if they be light bodies, an ascending, if heavy, a descending motion.
Empedocles, that the places of the elements are not always fixed
and determined, but they all succeed one another in their respective
stations.

CHAPTER VIII. WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF THE WORLD'S INCLINATION.

Diogenes and Anaxagoras state that, after the world was composed and had
produced living creatures, the world out of its own propensity made an
inclination toward the south. Perhaps this may be attributed to a wise
Providence (they affirm), that thereby some parts of the world may be
habitable, others uninhabitable, according as the various climates
are affected with a rigorous cold, or a scorching heat, or a just
temperament of cold and heat. Empedocles, that the air yielding to the
impetuous force of the solar rays, the poles received an inclination;
whereby the northern parts were exalted and the southern depressed, by
which means the whole world received its inclination.

CHAPTER IX. OF THAT THING WHICH IS BEYOND THE WORLD, AND WHETHER IT BE A
VACUUM OR NOT.

Pythagoras and his followers say that beyond the world there is a
vacuum, into which and out of which the world hath its respiration.
The Stoics, that there is a vacuum into which infinite space by a
conflagration shall be dissolved. Posidonius, not an infinite vacuum,
but as much as suffices for the dissolution of the world; and this he
asserts in his first book concerning the Vacuum. Aristotle affirms, that
a vacuum does not exist. Plato concludes that neither within nor without
the world there is any vacuum.

CHAPTER X. WHAT PARTS OF THE WORLD ARE ON THE RIGHT HAND, AND WHAT ON
THE LEFT.

Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle declare that the eastern parts of the
world, from whence motion commences, are of the right, those of the
western are of the left hand of the world. Empedocles, that those that
are of the right hand face the summer solstice, those of the left the
winter solstice.

CHAPTER XI. OF HEAVEN, WHAT IS ITS NATURE AND ESSENCE.

Anaximenes affirms that the circumference of heaven makes