The Elizabethan World Picture by Jr. Myers

Author:Jr. Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

(iii) The Elements

Whether or not every educated Elizabethan had it well in his mind that the ether, according to Aristotle, had its native and eternal motion, which was circular, he took the motions and properties of the four elements very much for granted. When Cleopatra said she was all air and fire, the educated part of the audience at least would understand without the slightest effort of memory. The property of air and fire was to go upwards in a straight line, as was that of earth and water to go down.

The change of meaning in the word element has prevented a modern from understanding the thoroughness with which medieval and modern science are opposed. An element is thought of as an ultimate constituent part, a final result after analysis has done its work; and the four elements are regarded as the rudimentary gropings after an atomic theory instead of something quite opposed. Now just as God, source of all existence, to the medieval mind was first of all one and after was divided in this way or that; so matter was one, and the elements far from being ultimate and different indivisibles were primarily certain qualities attributable to all matter. They were founded on the notions of hot and cold, dry and moist; and earth as an element was the name for the cold and dry qualities of matter in combination. In other words the elements were thought of through their effects. These effects working on a common substance were thought, in co-operation with stellar influence and the occasional extraordinary intervention of God, to explain the way the sublunary world was conducted. But the elements could not be limited to qualities and effects, in ordinary thought. Nemesius puts the ordinary notion plainly enough:

Every one of these elements hath two coupled qualities, which constitute the species or nature of it. Yet these qualities by themselves cannot be elements; for qualities are void of body, and of things incorporeal things corporeal cannot be made. It follows therefore necessarily that every element is a body and a simple-body, and such a one as hath actually in it, in the highest degree, these qualities: heat cold moisture and dryness.

The elements therefore as well as being effects were at least aspects of the common substance, and as such they had their almost ceremonial places in the great world order.

Heaviest and lowest was the cold and dry element, the earth. Its natural place was the centre of the universe, of which it was the dregs. Outside earth was the region of cold and moist, the water. That solid land should thrust itself above the waters was merely one of the many instances of an extrinsic cause making a thing depart from its own intrinsic nature. Outside water was the region of hot and moist, the air. Air though nobler than water was not to be compared with the ether for purity. Just as angels took their shapes from the ether, so the devils took theirs from the air, their peculiar region.

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