IN WHAT FORM AND ORDER THE WORLD WAS COMPOSED.
Parmenides believes that there are small coronets alternately twisted
one within another, some made up of a thin, others of a condensed
matter; and there are others between them mixed mutually together of
light and of darkness, and about them all there is a solid substance,
which like a firm wall surrounds these coronets. Leucippus and
Democritus wrap the world round about, as with a garment and membrane.
Epicurus says that that which bounds some worlds is thin, and that
which limits others is gross and condensed; and of these worlds some
are in motion, others are fixed. Plato, that fire takes the first place
in the world, the second the ether, after that the air, under that
the water; the last place the earth possesseth: sometimes he puts the
ether and the fire in the same place. Aristotle gives the first place
to the ether, as that which is impassible, it being a kind of 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.