[15] Wherefore it is also probable that the world, if it is an animal, has in many parts of its body earth, and in as many fire and water and air, not thrust and driven into it by force, but ordered and disposed by reason. For neither was the eye by its lightness forced into that part of the body where it is, nor the heart by its gravity pressed down into the breast; but both the one and the other were thus placed because it was better and more expedient. In like manner we ought not to think of the parts of the world, either that the earth settled where it is, being beaten down thither by its ponderosity; or that the sun was carried upwards by its levity, like a bottle or bladder full of wind (which, being plunged into the bottom of the water, immediately rises up again), as Metrodorus of Chios was persuaded; or that the other stars, as if they had been put into a balance, were swayed this way or that way, according to their weight or lightness, and so mounted higher or lower to the places they now possess. But reason having prevailed in the constitution of the world, the stars have, like to glittering eyes, been fixed in the firmament, as it were in the face of the universe, there to turn continually about; and the sun, having the force and vigor of the heart, sends and distributes its heat and light, like blood and spirits, throughout all; the earth and sea are in the world, as the paunch and bladder in the body of a living creature; and the moon placed between the sun and the earth, as the liver, or some other soft entrail between the heart and the belly, transmits down thither the heat of the superior bodies, and draws round about her the vapors which arise from hence, subtilizing them by way of concoction and purification. And whether its solid and terrestrial quality has any other property serving for some profitable use, is indeed unknown to us; but everywhere that which is better prevails over what is by necessity. For what probability can we draw from that which they Affirm? They say, that the most subtile and luminous part of the air, by reason of its rarity, became heaven; but what was thickened and closely driven together was made into stars, of which the moon being the heaviest is compacted of the grossest and muddiest matter. And yet it is plainly to be seen, that the moon is not separated or divided from the air, but moves and makes her revolution through that which is about her, to wit, the region of the winds, and where the comets are engendered and keep their course. These bodies then were not by a natural inclination thus placed and situated as they are, but have by some other reason been so ordered and disposed.
De Facie Quae in orbe Lunae Apparet. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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