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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: the ratios of their numbers, motions, and other properties, everywhere God,
as far as necessity allowed or gave consent, has exactly perfected, and
harmonized in due proportion.
From all that we have just been saying about the elements or kinds, the
most probable conclusion is as follows:--earth, when meeting with fire and
dissolved by its sharpness, whether the dissolution take place in the fire
itself or perhaps in some mass of air or water, is borne hither and
thither, until its parts, meeting together and mutually harmonising, again
become earth; for they can never take any other form. But water, when
divided by fire or by air, on re-forming, may become one part fire and two
parts air; and a single volume of air divided becomes two of fire. Again,
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