COMPOSED.
Thales affirms that they are globes of earth set on fire. Empedocles,
that they are fiery bodies arising from that fire which the aether
embraced within itself, and did shatter in pieces when the elements were
first separated one from another. Anaxagoras, that the circumambient
aether is of a fiery substance, which, by a vehement force in its
whirling about, did tear stones from the earth, and by its own power
set them on fire, and establish them as stars in the heavens. Diogenes
thinks they resemble pumice stones, and that they are the breathings
of the world; again he supposeth that there are some invisible stones,
which fall sometimes from heaven upon the earth, and are there quenched;
as it happened at Aegos-potami, where a stony star resembling fire did
fall. Empedocles, that the fixed stars fastened to the crystal, but the
planets are loosened. Plato, that the stars for the most part are of a
fiery nature, but they are made partakers of another element, with
they are mixed after the resemblance of glue. Zenophanes, that they are
composed of inflamed clouds, which in the daytime are quenched, and in
the night are kindled again. The like we see in coals; for the rising
and setting of the stars is nothing else but the quenching and kindling
of them. Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans, that every star is a world
in an infinite aether, and encompasseth air, earth, and aether; this
opinion is current among the disciples of Orpheus, for they suppose that
each of the stars does make a world. Epicurus condemns none of these
opinions, for he embraces anything that is possible.