74 FABLE Oi- CUP ID. 



secondly, upon motion and time, by anticipating the order 

 of nature and accelerating the process of substance. But 

 these pertain to the parable of heaven, where we will discuss 

 more fully what we are now just intimating: and so we go 

 on to the elements of Telesius. And here I wish it had been 

 universally and at once agreed upon not to fetch entities 

 out of nonentities and elements out of nonelements, and 

 so to fall into manifest contradiction. But an abstract 

 element is not an ens; again, a mortal entity is not an 

 element; so that a necessity plainly invincible drives men 

 (if they would be consistent) to the idea of an atom, which 

 is a true ens, having matter, form, dimension, place, an 

 titype, appetite, motion, and emanation. It at the same 

 time remains unshaken and eternal during the dissolution 

 of all natural bodies. For since there are so many and 

 various corruptions taking place in greater bodies, it is re- 

 q uisite that what remains as the centre immutable, should 

 either be a somewhat potential or very small. But it is 

 not potential, for the first potential cannot be like the rest 

 which are potential, which are one thing in act, another 

 thing in power. But it is requisite that it should be plainly 

 abstract, since it refuses all act and contains all power. 

 And so it remains that this immutable should be of the 

 smallest size ; unless perchance some one will assert that 

 no elements exist, but that one thing serves for elements 

 to another, that the law and order of mutation are things 

 constant and eternal, that the essence itself is inconstant 

 and mutable. And it would indeed be better plainly to 

 make an assertion of this sort, than in laying down some 

 eternal principle to fall into the still greater absurdity of 

 making that principle a phantastic one. For that first 

 method seems to have some design and end, that things 

 should be changed into the world, but this, none, which for 

 entities adopts mere notions and mental abstractions. And 

 yet the impossibility of this being the case I shall hereafter 

 show. Yet his llyle pleased Telesius, which he transferred 

 from a later age after the birth of Parmenides philosophy. 

 But Telesius instituted an evidently unaccountable and 

 unequal contest between his elements in action, whether 

 you consider their forces or their kind of war. For, as to 

 their forces, the earth is alone, but the heaven has a great 

 army; the earth is as a little speck, the heaven hath its 

 immense regions. Nor can it relieve this difficulty that the 

 earth and its connaturals are asserted to be of the most 

 compact matter, and the heaven and etherial substances on 



