58 FABLE OF CUPID. 



element that things should be dissolved into it us that they 

 should be produced out of it. But this is not the case : 

 but of those bodies air and fire seem quite incapacitated 

 from administering any generating material, and only to 

 be adapted to the receiving of bodies resolved into them. 

 But, on the other hand, water is very favourable and con 

 ducive to generation, but with respect to resolution or 

 restoration of bodies the reverse ; as would be easily per 

 ceptible, if showers cease a little while. Nay, putrefac 

 tion itself by no means reduces things to pure and raw 

 water. But this was by far their greatest error, that they 

 made an element of that which is corruptible and mortal. 

 This they do, when they introduce an element which lays 

 Sown and leaves its own nature in its compounds. For 

 &quot; whatever by undergoing change departs from its proper 

 limits, this change is forthwith the death of that thing 

 which it was before.&quot; But we shall need to take this into 

 our account more when we have come to the proper place 

 for considering the third sect, which held more elements 

 than one, which sect has at once more strength and more 

 prejudice. We will therefore treat of these opinions seve 

 rally and not in the mass. 



Of those, then, who asserted a plurality of elements we 

 will place by themselves such as make them also infinite. 

 For the consideration of infinity pertains to the parable of 

 the heaven. But of the ancients Parmenides held two 

 principles, the fire and the earth, or heaven and earth. 

 For he asserted that the sun and stars were true fire, 

 pure and limpid, not degenerate as our fire, which, like 

 Vulcan after his fall, is the worse for its transmission. 

 These opinions were brought up again in our age by Tele- 

 sius, who was deeply versed in the peripatetic system (if, 

 indeed, there can be said to be system in it), which yet he 

 turned against itself; but unhappy in the stating of propo 

 sitions, and more able to pull down than to build up. There 

 are indeed but very slight and sparing memorials left us of 

 the conceptions of Parmenides. But we see the founda 

 tions of a similar opinion obviously laid in Plutarch, &quot; De 

 primo frigido,&quot; which seems to be taken from an ancient 

 work then in being, but now lost. For they contain not a 

 few opinions more acute and solid than the authors gene 

 rally were ; and by these Telesius seems to have been roused 

 both to catch them up with earnestness, and to pursue them 

 with vigour, in his commentaries on the nature of things. 

 These are the dogmas of this sect : that the first forms and 



