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IN WHAT FORM AND ORDER THE WORLD WAS COMPOSED.
Parmenides maintains that there are small coronets alternately twisted one within another, some made up of a thin, others of a condensed, matter; and there are others between mixed mutually together of light and of darkness, and around them all there is a solid substance, which like a firm wall surrounds these coronets.

Leucippus and Democritus cover the world round about, as with a garment and membrane.

Epicurus says that that which abounds some worlds is thin, and that which limits others is gross and condensed; and of these spheres some are in motion, others are fixed.

Plato, that fire takes the first place in the world, the second the aether, after that the air, under that the water; the last place the earth possesseth: sometimes he puts the aether and the fire in the same place.