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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: separated from fire and air, and then congeals into hail or ice, or the
looser forms of hoar frost or snow. There are other waters which are
called juices and are distilled through plants. Of these we may mention,
first, wine, which warms the soul as well as the body; secondly, oily
substances, as for example, oil or pitch; thirdly, honey, which relaxes the
contracted parts of the mouth and so produces sweetness; fourthly,
vegetable acid, which is frothy and has a burning quality and dissolves the
flesh. Of the kinds of earth, that which is filtered through water passes
into stone; the water is broken up by the earth and escapes in the form of
air--this in turn presses upon the mass of earth, and the earth, compressed
into an indissoluble union with the remaining water, becomes rock. Rock,
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