13
Therewith I checked myself and, after waiting a moment, said, What ails us, Eustrophus, that we all but passed over Homer Il. xv. 187. as if he were not the first to divide the world into five parts? For he duly assigned the three in the middle to the three gods, and the two extremes, the heaven and the earth, of which the one is the boundary of things below and the other of things above, he left to all in common, undistributed.
13
But the discussion must be carried further back, as EuripidesNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, no. 970; repeated in 431 a, infra. remarks. For those who exalt Four teach us a lesson that is not without value, that by reason of this number all solids have come into being. For since every such solid body exists through the acquisition of depth by length and breadth, and for length must be presupposed a single point assigned to unity, and length without breadth, which is called a line, is also duality, and the movement of the line breadthwise generates a plane in the third instance, and when depth is added, through the four factors the increase progresses to a solid — it is clear to everyone that four, when it has carried Nature forward to the point of completing a solid body and producing a volume that may be felt and that is resistant, has then left Nature lacking in the most important thing of all. For the inanimate thing is, to put it simply, orphaned, incomplete, and good for nothing, unless there be an animating soul to make use of it. The impulse or dispensation that creates the soul therein, a transformation brought about through five factors in all, gives to Nature its due completeness, and is as much more potent than four as the living being differs in worth from the inanimate thing.
