5G FABLE OF CU1MI). 



that which approaches nearest to bareness, and as it were 

 a veil of the thinnest and lightest kind. But by the vest 

 of Cupid I mean a certain form attributed to primary mat 

 ter, which is asserted to be substantially homogeneous 

 with the form of some one of the secondary entities. It 

 will be easy to prove that the assertions we have recited 

 respecting water, air, fire, are groundless, and here we can 

 take them by the genus, and not severally by the species, 

 into consideration. In the first place then the ancients did 

 not inquire with accuracy into the nature of elements, but 

 only made it their object to find out the chief virtues of 

 those bodies that were clearly under the senses, and those 

 virtues they supposed were the elements of things, through 

 a seeming not a real and true superiority of nature. For 

 they thought that such a nature was worthy of being said 

 to be solely that which it appeared : but every thing else 

 they held to be the nature itself, though by no means 

 according with the appearance ; so that they seem to have 

 spoken metaphorically or to have been under some fasci 

 nation, since the more powerful impression drew the re 

 maining properties after it. But a true philosopher would 

 look with equal attention to all the circumstances, and 

 would consider those to be the elements of things which 

 agreed with the very least and fewest and the most soli 

 tary of entities, and not only with the greatest, most 

 numerous, and most prolific. For although we men are 

 most struck by those entities which mostly meet our sight, 

 the bosom of nature is open to them all. But if they hold 

 that their opinion of an element, not on account of supe 

 riority of nature but simply, they seem indeed to fall into 

 the adoption of a harsher figure ; since the thing is plainly 

 made equivocal, and their assertion cannot be predicated 

 either of natural fire, air, or water, but of a certain phan- 

 tastical and notional fire (and so of the rest), which retains 

 the name without the definition of fire. They seem too 

 forced into the same difficulties with those who assert 

 abstract matter. For as they introduce an entire, so do 

 these a partial, potential, and phantastic matter. For they 

 lay down matter in one respect (as, that is, their supposed 

 element) with form and action ; in other respects only 

 potential. Nor is any thing gained by this kind of sole 

 principle more than by the supposition of abstract matter, 

 unless it be deemed an advantage that it is entertainable 

 by the comprehension of man, in which human contem 

 plation is more fixed and acquiesces, and through which 

 the notion of the element itself is made somewhat fuller, 



