mixture with two to take the measure
of two in the diffusion, this is together the measure both of three
and four,--of three because one is mixed with two, and of four because,
being mixed with two, it has an equal quantity with those with which
it is mixed. Now this fine subtilty is a consequence of their putting
bodies into a body, and so likewise is the unintelligibleness of the
manner how one is contained in the other. For it is of necessity that,
of bodies passing one into another by mixture, the one should not
contain and the other be contained, nor the one receive and the other be
received within; for this would not be a mixture, but a contiguity
and touching of the superficies, the one entering in, and the other
enclosing it without, and the rest of the parts remaining unmixed and
pure, and so it would be merely many different things. But there being
a necessity, according to their axiom of mixture, that the things which
are mixed should be mingled one within the other, and that the same
things should together be contained by being within, and by receiving
contain the other, and that neither of them could possibly exist again
as it was before, it comes to pass that both the subjects of the mixture
mutually penetrate each other, and that there is not any part of either
remaining separate, but that they are necessarily all filled with each
other.

Here now that famed leg of Arcesilaus comes in, with much laughter
insulting over their absurdities; for if these mixtures are through the
whole, what should hinder but that, a leg being cut off and putrefied
and cast into the sea and diffused, not only Antigonus's fleet (as
Arcesilaus said) might sail through it, but also Xerxes's twelve hundred
ships, together with the Grecians' three hundred galleys, might fight in
it? For the progress will not henceforth fail, nor the lesser cease
to be in the greater; or else the mixture will be at an end, and the
extremity of it, touching where it shall end, will not pass through the
whole, but will give over being mingled. But if the mixture is through
the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself give the Greeks room for
the sea-fight, for to this there is need of putrefaction and change;
but if one glass or but one drop of wine shall fall from hence into the
Aegean or Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main Atlantic Sea,
not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread quite through
it in depth, breadth, and length.