FABLE OF CUPID. Gl 



in its course ; in speed so as to be either quicker or slower, in 

 its course so as to be in a perfect circle, or to have somewhat 

 of a spiral direction, and not to restore itself plainly to the 

 same bound (for a spiral line is compounded of a right line 

 and a circle), and that so the heaven is subject to variety of 

 speed, and to deflection from recovery of itself, or to a 

 spiral course. For both the fixed stars and the planets are 

 of unequal speed, and the planets evidently turn from tropic 

 to tropic, and the higher the heavenly bodies are, the greater 

 speed they acquire and the nearer compass. For if the 

 phenomena are taken simply, and as they appear, and there 

 be laid down one diurnal motion in the heavens, simple 

 and natural, and that mathematical beauty of reducing 

 motions to perfect circles be rejected, and spiral lines re 

 ceived, and those contrarieties of motions in consecutive 

 order from east to west which they call the motion of the 

 primum mobile, and again from west to east, which they 

 call the planetary motion, are reduced to one, by still keep 

 ing the difference of the time in the return through over 

 haste, and through leaving of the course to the difference 

 as to the smoothness of the zodiac through the windings, 

 it is plain that it will take place which I have said : for 

 instance, that the moon, which is the lowest of the planets, 

 will go the most slowly in a curve the least deep, and 

 most expanded. And there may seem to this sect to be 

 (on account of the distance from the opposite side) a firm 

 and constant kind of nature of this portion of the heaven. 

 But Telesius does not clearly lay down whether he pre 

 served the ancient bounds so as to conceive that whatever 

 was situated above the moon was the same with the moon 

 itself, or whether he thought that an opposing power as 

 cended higher. But he held a portion of the earth (which 

 is the seat of an opposite nature) to be in the same way 

 quite of an unmixed and solid nature, and impenetrable 

 by heavenly influences. But he considered that there was 

 no reason for inquiring into the nature of that portion, only 

 that it was endowed with these four natures, cold, darkness, 

 density, and rest, and those perfect, and no way impaired. 

 But he assigns to the generation of things the part of the 

 earth toward its surface as a kind of bark or incrustation, 

 and that all the entities which have come to our knowledge 

 in any way, even the heaviest, hardest, and the lowest down, 

 metals, stones, the sea are produced from the earth, subdued 

 in some part by the heat of the heaven, and which has 

 already conceived somewhat of heat, radiation, tenuity, and 



