In what Form and Order the World Was Composed.

Parmenides maintains that there are small coronets alternately twisted one within another, some made up of a thin, others of a condensed, matter; and there are others between mixed mutually together of light and of darkness, and around them all there is a solid substance, which like a firm wall surrounds these coronets. Leucippus and Democritus cover the world round about, as with a garment and membrane. Epicurus says that that which abounds some worlds is thin, and that which limits others is gross and condensed; and of these spheres some are in motion, others are fixed. Plato, that fire takes the first place in the world, the second the ............