(53) Timaeus: fire and water and earth and air, although possessing some traces of their own nature, were yet so disposed as everything is likely to be in the absence of God; and inasmuch as this was then their natural condition, God began by first marking them out into shapes by means of forms and numbers. And that God constructed them, so far as He could, to be as fair and good as possible, whereas they had been otherwise,—this above all else must always be postulated in our account. Now, however, it is the disposition and origin

(56) Timaeus: since it is in all ways the sharpest and most acute of all; and it must also be the lightest, since it is composed of the fewest identical parts; and the second comes second in point of these same qualities, and the third third. Thus, in accordance with the right account and the probable, that solid which has taken the form of a pyramid shall be the element and seed of fire; the second in order of generation we shall affirm to be air, and the third water. Now one must conceive all these to be so small that none of them,

(48) Timaeus: and taking once again a fresh starting point suitable to the matter we must make a fresh start in dealing therewith, just as we did with our previous subjects. We must gain a view of the real nature of fire and water, air and earth, as it was before the birth of Heaven, and the properties they had before that time; for at present no one has as yet declared their generation, but we assume that men know what fire is, and each of these things, and we call them principles and presume that they are elements of the Universe, although in truth they do not so much as deserve to be likened with any likelihood,

(23) And there the holy Tincture is generated out of the Essences, which regards not the Fire, but sets the Essences (viz. the Soul) in its pleasant Joy. Then come the other three Elements out of their Regions, and fill themselves also by Force Or Dominion. therein, each of them would taste of the Virgin, receive her and qualify [or mingle] with her: viz. the Water, that fills itself by Force also therein, and it tastes the sweet Tincture of the Soul. And the Fire says; I would willingly keep the Water, for I can quench my Thirst therewith, and refresh myself therein. And the Air says; I am indeed the Spirit, I will blow up the Heat and Fire, that the Water do not choak thee. And the Fire says to the Air; I will keep thee, for thou upholdest my Quality for me, that I also go not out. And then comes the Element [of] (Earth) and says; What will you three do alone? You will starve and consume one another; for you depend all three on one another and devour yourselves, and when you shall have consumed the Water, then you extinguish; for the Air cannot move, unless it has some Water; for the Water is the Mother of the Air, which generates the Air: Moreover, the Fire becomes much too fierce [violent and eager] if the Water be consumed, and consumes the Body, and then our Region is out, and none of us can subsist.

(24) Then thus say the three Elements (the Fire, the Air, and the Water) to the Earth; Thou art indeed too dark, too rough, and too cold, and thou art rejected by the Fiat: We cannot take thee in; thou destroyest our Dwelling, and makest it dark and stinking, and thou afflictest our Virgin, which is our only Delight and Treasure wherein we live. And the Earth says; Yet pray take my P Children in; they are lovely, and of good Esteem; they afford you Meat and Drink, and cherish you, that you never suffer Want.

(23) Therefore, my beloved Soul, be lively, and see what thy noble Bridegroom has left thee in his Testaments for a Legacy; as namely, in the Baptism, the Water of his Covenant, flowing from his holy original Body. Whereas we in this World, viz. in the external Birth of his Body, do acknowledge four Things, namely, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, wherein our earthly Body consists; so likewise in the heavenly Body there are four such Things. The Fire is the Enkindling of the divine Desire. The Water is that which the Fire desires, whence it becomes meek, and a Light. The Air is the joyful Spirit which blows up the Fire, and makes in the Water the Motion. And the Earth is the true Essence which is born in the three Elements, and is rightly called Ternarius Sanctus [the Sacred Ternary,] in which the Tincture is brought forth in the Light of the Meekness; and therein also is born the holy Blood out of the Water, being an Oil of the Water, in which the Light shines, and the Spirit of Life consists.

(49) Timaeus: as we believe, stones and earth; and again, this same substance, by dissolving and dilating, becoming breath and air; and air through combustion becoming fire; and conversely, fire when contracted and quenched returning back to the form of air and air once more uniting and condensing into cloud and mist; and issuing from these, when still further compressed, flowing water; and from water earth and stones again: thus we see the elements passing on to one another, as it would seem,

(2) Air is, therefore, twofold in nature-tangible atmosphere and an intangible, volatile substratum which may be termed spiritual air. Fire is visible and invisible, discernible and indiscernible--a spiritual, ethereal flame manifesting through a material, substantial flame. Carrying the analogy further, water consists of a dense fluid and a potential essence of a fluidic nature. Earth has likewise two essential parts--the lower being fixed, terreous, immobile; the higher, rarefied, mobile, and virtual. The general term elements has been applied to the lower, or physical, phases of these four primary principles, and the name elemental essences to their corresponding invisible, spiritual constitutions. Minerals, plants, animals, and men live in a world composed of the gross side of these four elements, and from various combinations of them construct their living organisms.

(6) We may now consider the question whether fire is the sole element existing in that celestial realm and whether there is any outgoing thence with the consequent need of renewal.

Timaeus pronounced the material frame of the All to consist primarily of earth and fire for visibility, earth for solidity- and deduced that the stars must be mainly composed of fire, but not solely since there is no doubt they are solid.

And this is probably a true account. Plato accepts it as indicated by all the appearances. And, in fact, to all our perception- as we see them and derive from them the impression of illumination- the stars appear to be mostly, if not exclusively, fire: but on reasoning into the matter we judge that since solidity cannot exist apart from earth-matter, they must contain earth as well.

But what place could there be for the other elements? It is impossible to imagine water amid so vast a conflagration; and if air were present it would be continually changing into fire.

Admitting that two self-contained entities, standing as extremes to each other need for their coherence two intermediaries; we may still question whether this holds good with regard to physical bodies. Certainly water and earth can be mixed without any such intermediate. It might seem valid to object that the intermediates are already present in the earth and the water; but a possible answer would be, "Yes, but not as agents whose meeting is necessary to the coherence of those extremes."

None the less we will take it that the coherence of extremes is produced by virtue of each possessing all the intermediates. It is still not proven that fire is necessary to the visibility of earth and earth to the solidarity of fire.

On this principle, nothing possesses an essential-nature of its very own; every several thing is a blend, and its name is merely an indication of the dominant constituent.

Thus we are told that earth cannot have concrete existence without the help of some moist element- the moisture in water being the necessary adhesive- but admitting that we so find it, there is still a contradiction in pretending that any one element has a being of its own and in the same breath denying its self-coherence, making its subsistence depend upon others, and so, in reality, reducing the specific element to nothing. How can we talk of the existence of the definite Kind, earth- earth essential- if there exists no single particle of earth which actually is earth without any need of water to secure its self-cohesion? What has such an adhesive to act upon if there is absolutely no given magnitude of real earth to which it may bind particle after particle in its business of producing the continuous mass? If there is any such given magnitude, large or small, of pure earth, then earth can exist in its own nature, independently of water: if there is no such primary particle of pure earth, then there is nothing whatever for the water to bind. As for air- air unchanged, retaining its distinctive quality- how could it conduce to the subsistence of a dense material like earth?

Similarly with fire. No doubt Timaeus speaks of it as necessary not to the existence but to the visibility of earth and the other elements; and certainly light is essential to all visibility- we cannot say that we see darkness, which implies, precisely, that nothing is seen, as silence means nothing being heard.

But all this does not assure us that the earth to be visible must contain fire: light is sufficient: snow, for example, and other extremely cold substances gleam without the presence of fire- though of course it might be said that fire was once there and communicated colour before disappearing.

As to the composition of water, we must leave it an open question whether there can be such a thing as water without a certain proportion of earth.

But how can air, the yielding element, contain earth?

Fire, again: is earth perhaps necessary there since fire is by its own nature devoid of continuity and not a thing of three dimensions?

Supposing it does not possess the solidity of the three dimensions, it has that of its thrust; now, cannot this belong to it by the mere right and fact of its being one of the corporeal entities in nature? Hardness is another matter, a property confined to earth-stuff. Remember that gold- which is water- becomes dense by the accession not of earth but of denseness or consolidation: in the same way fire, with Soul present within it, may consolidate itself upon the power of the Soul; and there are living beings of fire among the Celestials.

But, in sum, do we abandon the teaching that all the elements enter into the composition of every living thing?

For this sphere, no; but to lift clay into the heavens is against nature, contrary to the laws of her ordaining: it is difficult, too, to think of that swiftest of circuits bearing along earthly bodies in its course nor could such material conduce to the splendour and white glint of the celestial fire.

(66) From the sun and stars proceed the four elements, fire, air, water and earth, as hereafter I shall demonstrate plainly, when I shall write of the creation. Now observe:

(9) Moreover, what has proceeded from the four Elements may be perceived in the Fierceness of the Fire, how instantly the strong Air goes forth from the Fire; and the Stone or Wood is nothing else but a Sulphur from the Water and from the Earth; and if the Tincture be consumed by the Fierceness, then the [Wood or Stone] would come to Ashes, and at last to nothing; as indeed, at the End, this World with the four Elements will come to nothing, and there shall remain nothing else of them in the eternal Element, but the Figure and the Shadow in the Wonders of God. How then canst thou think that God has created the eternal Man out of the four Elements, or what has proceeded from them, which are but corruptible?

(34) But that also the element of fire is, and does rule in the deep of the air and water, thou seest in tempests of lightning; also thou perceivest how the light of the sun kindleth the element of fire on the earth with its reflection, although many times aloft in the upper region towards the moon it is very cold.

(49) Timaeus: That, however, is a difficult task, especially because it is necessary, for its sake, to discuss first the problem of fire and its fellow elements. For in regard to these it is hard to say which particular element we ought really to term water rather than fire, and which we ought to term any one element rather than each and all of them, while still employing a terminology that is reliable and stable. How, then, shall we handle this problem, and what likely solution can we offer? First of all, we see that which we now call “water” becoming by condensation,

(27) Thus heat and cold are the cause and original of water and air, in which everything acteth and stands; every life and mobility stands therein. Of this I shall write plainly, concerning the creation of the stars. Of the Influences of the other Qualities in the Three Elements, Fire, Air, and Water. Of the Bitter Quality.

(32) Timaeus: had had to come into existence as a plane surface, having no depth, one middle term would have sufficed to bind together both itself and its fellow-terms; but now it is otherwise: for it behoved it to be solid of shape, and what brings solids into unison is never one middle term alone but always two. Thus it was that in the midst between fire and earth God set water and air, and having bestowed upon them so far as possible a like ratio one towards another—air being to water as fire to air, and water being to earth as air to water, —he joined together and constructed a Heaven visible and tangible. For these reasons

(8) For this is very well to be apprehended and perceived in the Earth and Stones, that the four Elements are of one only Substance, and that the Earth and Stones were generated in the Fierceness from the Kindling of the Elements. For a Stone is but Water; and therefore we should do well to consider, what Kind of Fierceness there must have been, that has drawn the Water so hard together.

(25) Hereupon thus say the three Elements: But so they may afterwards get a Dwelling in us, and may come to be strong and great, and then we must depart, or be in Subjection to them, and therefore we will not take them in neither, for they may come to be as rough and cold as thou art: Yet this we will do, thou mayest let thy Children dwell in our Courts and Porches, and we will come and be their Guest, and eat of their Fruit, and drink of their Drink, else the Water which is contained in the Element would be too little for us.

(56) Timaeus: and the fractions of air which come from the dissolving of one particle will form two corpuscles of fire. And again, when a small quantity of fire is enclosed by a large quantity of air and water, or of earth, and moves within them as they rush along, and is defeated in its struggle and broken up, then two corpuscles of fire unite to make one form of air. And when air is defeated and disintegrated, from two whole forms of air and a half, one whole form of water will be compounded.

(5) We must conceive, that there was then a very pleasant Habitation upon the Earth; for all the Fruits did grow [spring and bud] out of the hidden Element, through the Fierceness of the four Elements; and although the four Elements had also their Fruits, yet Man should not (but the Beasts of the Field should) have eaten thereof. But now when the Lord cursed the Earth, then the Element withdrew from the Root of the Fruit, for God's Cursing is nothing else, but this Flying from a Thing; and thus God's Holiness is flown from the Root of the Fruit, and so the Root [of the Fruits] remains in the four Elements, in the Out-Birth; and Adam and Eve were also fallen thereinto. And thus now like came to like; his Body also was become earthly, and must turn to Earth again.

(48) And out of this Limbus (at the Time when the Earth was corporised) went forth the four Elements, as out of a Fountain; and that which was discovered [or manifested] by the Virgin (the Wisdom of God) in the Innumerability, were the Stars, as are the Quintessence zof the four Elements, not separated from the four Elements, but qualifying [or mixing Virtues] one with another, a and yet extracted from the four Productions, with their sharp Essences; and they are the Seeking [Longing or Hunger] of the four Elements, or, as I may express it by a Similitude, [they are] the Man, and the Elements are the Woman; and the Heart of these Things is the Element, in one only Substance, and the Essences in that [one Element] are the Virtues [or Power] of the Wonders of the Wisdom of God, and are called Paradise, an exulting Joy.