EXTRACTS
Preface.—In this book, as it were in a brief outline we have commented on certain causes in the heavens, and the sites of the lands, and the spaces of the sea, so that the reader may run them over in a little time, and learn their etymologies and causes with compendious brevity.
Chapter 1. On the universe.
1. The universe is the heavens, the earth, the sea, and what in them is the work of God, of whom it is said: “And the universe was made by him”. The universe (mundus) is so named in Latin by the philosophers because it is in continued motion (motu), as for example, the heavens, the sun, moon, air, seas. For no rest is permitted to its elements, and therefore it is always in motion.
2. Whence also the elements seem to Varro living creatures, since, he says, they move of themselves. The Greeks have borrowed a name for the universe from ornament, on account of the variety of the elements and the beauty of the stars. For it is called among them κόσμος, which means ornament. For with the eyes of the flesh we see nothing fairer than the universe.
3. It is agreed that there are four climata, that is, tracts of the universe: East, West, North, South.
Chapter 2. On the atoms.
1. The philosophers call by the name of atoms certain parts of bodies in the universe so very minute that they do not appear to the sight, nor admit of τομή, that is, division, whence they are called atoms. These are said to flit through the void of the whole universe with restless motions, and to move hither and thither like the finest dust that is seen when the rays of the sun pour through the windows. From these certain philosophers of the heathen have thought that trees are produced, and herbs and all fruits, and fire and water, and all things are made out of them.
2. Atoms exist either in a body, or in time, or in number, or in the letters. In a body as a stone. You divide it into parts, and the parts themselves you divide into grains like the sands, and again you divide the very grains of sand into the finest dust, until if you could, you would come to some little particle which is now [such] that it cannot be divided or cut. This is an atom in a body.
3. In time, the atom is thus understood: you divide a year, for example, into months, the months into days, the days into hours, the parts of the hours still admit of division, until you come to such an instant of time and fragment of a moment as it were, that it cannot be lengthened by any little bit and therefore it cannot be divided. This is the atom of time.