through the pores is filled up by the inhalation of breath through the
mouth and nostrils. The explanation of this double phenomenon is as
follows:--Elements move towards their natural places. Now as every animal
has within him a fountain of fire, the air which is inhaled through the
mouth and nostrils, on coming into contact with this, is heated; and when
heated, in accordance with the law of attraction, it escapes by the way it
entered toward the place of fire. On leaving the body it is cooled and
drives round the air which it displaces through the pores into the empty
lungs. This again is in turn heated by the internal fire and escapes, as
it entered, through the pores.

The phenomena of medical cupping-glasses, of swallowing, and of the hurling
of bodies, are to be explained on a similar principle; as also sounds,
which are sometimes discordant on account of the inequality of them, and
again harmonious by reason of equality. The slower sounds reaching the
swifter, when they begin to pause, by degrees assimilate with them: whence
arises a pleasure which even the unwise feel, and which to the wise becomes
a higher sense of delight, being an imitation of divine harmony in mortal
motions. Streams flow, lightnings play, amber and the magnet attract, not
by reason of attraction, but because 'nature abhors a vacuum,' and because
things, when compounded or dissolved, move different ways, each to its own
place.

I will now return to the phenomena of respiration. The fire, entering the
belly, minces the food, and as it escapes, fills the veins by drawing after
it the divided portions, and thus the streams of nutriment are diffused
through the body. The fruits or herbs which are our daily sustenance take
all sorts of colours when intermixed, but the colour of red or fire
predominates, and hence the liquid which we call blood is red, being the
nurturing principle of the body, whence all parts are watered and empty