duration, and there are animals which admit of a vacuity, and there
is a unity.


Empedocles the Agrigentine, the son of Meton, affirms that there
are four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, and two powers
which bear the greatest command in nature, concord and discord, of
which one is the union, the other the division of beings.
Thus he sings,

Hear first the four roots of all created things:--
Bright shining Jove, Juno that beareth life,
Pluto beneath the earth, and Nestis who
Doth with her tears water the human fount.

By Jupiter he understands fire and ether, by Juno that gives life
he means the air, by Pluto the earth, by Nestis and the spring of
all mortals (as it were) seed and water.

Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, and Plato son of Ariston, both natives of Athens, entertain the same opinion concerning the universe; for they suppose three principles, God, matter, and the idea. God is the universal understanding; matter is that which is the first substratum, accommodated for the generation and corruption of beings; the idea is an incorporeal essence, existing in the cogitations and apprehensions of God; for God is the soul and mind of the world.

Aristotle the son of Nichomachus, the Stagirite, constitutes three
principles; Entelecheia (which is the same with form), matter, and
privation. He acknowledges four elements, and adds a certain
fifth body, which is ethereal and not obnoxious to mutation.

Zeno son of Mnaseas, the native of Citium, avers these to be
principles, God and matter, the first of which is the efficient
cause, the other the passible and receptive. Four more elements
he likewise confesses.