FABLE OF CUPID. 53 



all generations the most numerous was the generation of 

 fishes and water-animals. But Anaximenes chose air for 

 the one sole element. For if bulk is to come into consi 

 deration in treating upon the elements of things, air seems 

 by far the most bulky, and to occupy the greatest space. 

 For unless a separate vacuum be given, or the superstition 

 of the heterogeneous nature of the heavenly and sublunary 

 bodies be resorted to, whatever is extended from the globe 

 of the earth to the furthest region of the heavenly expanse, 

 and is neither star nor meteor, seems to be filled with aerial 

 substance. &amp;gt; And the abode of this earthly globe is thought 

 to be as a point in comparison of the circuit of the heavens. 

 But in the ether itself, how very small a portion is be 

 sprinkled with stars, when in the nearer spheres they are 

 seen single, in the last, although there is a great number of 

 them, yet, considering the interstellar spaces, but a small 

 part of space seems to be occupied by stars ; so that they 

 all appear to swim in one immense sea of ether. Nor is 

 that part of ether and spirit inconsiderable, which has its 

 seat and settlement in the waters and the hollow places of 

 the earth, whence the waters receive their tides. They are, 

 moreover, extended, and swell; but not only has the earth its 

 porousness, but also its tremors and agitations, evident signs 

 of wind and air pent up within it. But if a middle nature 

 is proper to elements, in order to the being susceptible of so 

 great a variety, that is certainly found in air. For air is, as 

 it were, the common bond of things, not only because it is 

 every where close at hand, and takes the place of other 

 things, and possesses itself of void spaces, but so much the 

 more from its appearing to have a middle and a diaphorous 

 nature. For this is that body which receives and conveys 

 light, darkness, and the tints of all colours and shades ; 

 which, by its admirably nice motion, discriminates the im 

 pressions and notes of harmonic and, what is by far more 

 remarkable, of articulate sounds, which enters without con 

 fusing the differences of scents, not only those general ones 

 of pure and foetid, of dull, acute, and the like, but also the 

 peculiar and specific, as of the rose or the violet; which 

 accommodates itself equally to those remarkable and very 

 powerful qualities of hot and cold, also of wet and dry, in 

 which aqueous vapours, dense fogs, spirits of salts, fumes 

 of metals fly suspended in the height ; lastly, in which the 

 rays of light and the closer agreements and variances of 

 things move and make a noise ; so that the air is, as it were, 

 a second chaos, in which so many seeds of things move, 



