FABLE OF CUPID. G3 



parts of the earth, that for instance the sun should never 

 be vertically above the greater part of the earth, or the 

 falling of his rays perpendicular; so that it can never 

 occupy the whole globe of the earth with any very powerful 

 body of heat. Thirdly, the obliquity of the sun s motion in 

 its passage through the zodiac, respect being had to the same 

 parts of the earth whence the heat of the sun, in whatever 

 power it is, is not incessantly increased, but returns by 

 greater intervals. Fourthly, the celerity of the sun in 

 respect of his diurnal motion which accomplishes so great 

 a course in so small a space of time, whence arises a less 

 delay of heat, nor is there any moment of time in which 

 the heat may settle. Fifthly, the continuation of series of 

 bodies between the sun and the earth ; so that the sun does 

 not send forth an unbroken power of heat through a 

 vacuum, but passing through so many resisting bodies, 

 and having to do and to contend with each, is weakened 

 over this immense space ; and so much the more, since the 

 further it proceeds and the weaker it becomes, so much 

 the more increase of resistance does it find in the bodies, 

 and most of all after arriving at the surface of the earth, 

 where there seems not only a resistance, but even some 

 degree of repulsion. And he thus lays down his theory on 

 the process of change. That there is as it were a deadly 

 and interminable war, and that those contrary natures do 

 not come together by any compact, nor by a third, except 

 ing primitive matter. That either nature therefore naturally 

 seeks the destruction of the other, and the putting into 

 matter itself and our nature only, so that it is the object 

 of each (as he repeatedly and very plainly saith) to effect a 

 change of the other, of the sun, the change of the earth 

 into the sun ; and of the earth, the change of the sun into 

 the earth; and that the regularity and justly proportioned 

 motions of all things present no obstacle to this theory ; 

 nor that every action has in its due course its beginning, 

 its progress, its increase, its diminution, and its rest : that 

 nevertheless not any of these happen through the laws of 

 order, but entirely through want of restraint and order; 

 for that the whole difference whether of excess or inferiority 

 in influence and action is not occasioned by the direction 

 of the effort of the motion itself (which begets a whole), but 

 from the force and curb of the opposite nature. That the 

 diversity, multiplicity, and even perplexity of operation is 

 owing altogether to one of these three ; the power of heat, 

 the arrangement of the matter, or the mode of its reduction ; 



