mistake ofrelying on the evidence of a scriptural text against those who produce
Book 11 191 would seek its proper place by breaking through to place itself above on the surface. So now therefore what we are inquiring into is whether the fashioner of things, who arrangedall things in measure andnumberandweight (Wis 1 1 :20), allotted notjust one proper place to the weight of the waters round the earth, but also another on top of the heaven or sky which was solidified after being poured out round the outer limits of the air.1
3. Those who maintain that this is an impossible position to hold base their argument on the weights of the elements,2 maintaining that the sky cannot possibly have been solidified up above into a kind of paved floor capable of sustaining the weight of the waters, because such solidity can only belong to things of earth, and anything of that sort is not sky or heaven, but earth, the elements being distinguished not only by their places but also by their qualities, so that it is in virtue of their specific qualities that they are allotted their specific places. Thus water's place is above earth, and even if it settles or sinks under the earth, as in caves and hidden potholes, it is still being held up by that part of the earth which it has underneath itself, not by that part which is above it. After all, if from the part of the earth above it any piece falls down, it does not remain on top of the water but breaks through its surface and sinks and goes down to the earth at the bottom; there it rests as in its own place, so that water remains on top, earth underneath. From this one concludes that even when it was above the water it was not being borne up by the water, but being held together by the compactness of the earth, as can be demonstrated from subterranean tomb chambers.
A problem raised by Psalm 136:6
4. Here it occurs to me to repeat the warning l gave in Book I about the mistake ofrelying on the evidence of a scriptural text against those who produce these subtle arguments about the weights of the elements,3 and quoting perhaps what is written in the psalms: whofounded the earth on the water (Ps 136:6), because such people do not acknowledge the authority of our literature and are ignorant of the way in which that was said, and so they are more likely to poke fun at the sacred books than to repudiate what they have come to hold by reasoned arguments or have proved by the clearest experiments.
One acceptable way of taking that verse of the psalm is to treat it as said figu ratively; so since by the names of "heaven" and "earth" it is often the spiritual
1 . This answers in some degree to the picture the authors of Genesis had of the firmament, as a kind of brazen dome over the world; in creating it, did not God, Augustine is wondering, act like a foundryman pouring molten brass into a mold to make bells. The Hebrew word, however, suggests a slightly different craft, that of a coppersmith beating out a sheet of metal into the appropriate shape. 2. The four elements of ancient chemistry: earth, water, air, and fire. 3. See Book 1,19,39.