11
There are many other examples of this sort of thing, said I, which I shall pass over. I shall merely adduce Plato,Plato, Timaeus, 31 a. who, in speaking about a single world, says that if there are others besides ours, and ours is not the only one, then there are five altogether and no more. Cf.Moralia, 421 f, 422 f, 430 b, and 887 b. Nevertheless, even if this world of ours is the only one ever created, as Aristotle De Caelo, i. 8-9 (276 a 18). also thinks, even ours, he says, is in a way put together through the union of five worlds, of which one is of earth, another of water, a third of fire, a fourth of air; and the fifth, the heavens, others call light, and others aether, and others call this very thing a fifth substance (Quintessence), which alone of the bodies has by nature a circular motion that is not the result of any compelling powrer or any other incidental cause. Wherefore also Plato, apparently noting the five most beautiful and complete forms among those found in Nature, pyramid, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, and dodecahedron, appropriately assigned each to each.
12
There are some who associate the senses also, since they are of the same number, with those primal elements, observing that touch functions against something resistant, and is earthly, and that taste, through moisture in the things tasted, absorbs their qualities. Air, when it is struck, becomes voice or sound in the hearing of it. Of the two remaining senses, odour, which the sense of smell has received as its portion, since it is an exhalation and is engendered by heat, bears a resemblance to fire; and in sight, which flashes to its goal owing to its kinship with aether and light, there occurs a combination and coalescence of the two, which behaves as they do. The living being possesses no other sense, nor has the world any other nature single and uncombined; but a marvellous distribution and apportionment each to each has, as it seems, been made of the five to the five.
