Note 34 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

C. The universe. Holding this view of the elements, the Stoics, it will be seen, did not deviate to any very great extent, in their ideas of the World, from Aristotle and the views which were generally entertained. In the centre of the Universe reposes the globe of the earth;34 around it is water, above the water is air. These three strata form the kernel of the world, which is in a state of repose,35 and around these the Ether revolves in a circle, together with the stars which are set therein. At the top, in one stratum, are all the fixed stars; under the stratum containing the fixed stars are the planets, in seven different strata—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, then the Sun, and in the lowest stratum, bordering on the region of air, is the Moon.36 Thus the world consists, as with Aristotle, of a globe containing many strata, one above another.37 That it cannot be unlimited, as Democritus and Epicurus maintain, follows from the very nature of body.38 The space within the world is fully occupied by the material of the world, without a vacant space being anywhere left.39 Outside the world, however, is empty space, or else how—the Stoics asked—would there be a place into which the world could be resolved at the general conflagration?40 Moreover, this empty space must be unlimited; for how can there be a limit, or any kind of boundary, to that which is immaterial and non-existent?41 But although the world is in empty space, it does not move, for the half of its component elements being heavy, and the other half light, as a whole it is neither heavy nor light.42