single one of the elements is in all things." But particular things, like trees and stones and
Book III 219 flowing and surging fluid allotted to reptiles of live souls, or as attenuated and held in suspension in the form of vapor and given over to flying things, are still assigned to the humid element.
Thefive senses in relation to thefour elements
4, 6. And so it is that there are some people who make a very nicely thought-out distinction between the five manifest senses of the body with refer ence to the four familiar elements, as follows: they say that the eyes go along with fire and the ears with air, while they attribute the senses both of smell and of taste to the humid element. The sense of smell they ally to these humid exhala tions that give density to this space in which the birds fly around, while they join taste to this element in its more substantial and liquid form. Everything, you see, that is tasted in the mouth is mixed with the fluid of the mouth in order to yield a taste, even if it seemed to be dry when it was taken. Fire, however, penetrates all things, to produce movement in them. Liquids, after all, congeal when deprived ofheat, and furthermore, while the other elements can be heated to boiling point, fire cannot be cooled; indeed, it is more easily put out so as to stop being fire, than kept cold, or made cooler by contact with something cold. Touch, however, which is the fifth among the senses, is more closely allied to the element ofearth; that is why you feel anything that touches any part of the body, which consists above all of earth.
They also say that nothing can be seen without fire or touched without earth, and thus every single one of the elements is in all the others,8 but that each gets its name from what it has most ofin it; while the reason sensation grows numb when the body, deprived of heat, gets too cold is that all movement, caused in the body by heat, slows down, the process being that fire works on air, and air on the liquids, and the liquids on everything earthy—the finer elements, that is, pene trating the grosser.9
8. Acper hoc elementa omnia in omnibus inesse. This could also mean, "And thus it is that every single one of the elements is in all things." But particular things, like trees and stones and metals, can hardly be said to have been named after one or other of the elements. So 1 prefer to take him as in fact saying that you never find any of the four elements in a pure state, but always mixed up with the others. This will support the view of those ancient "scientists" who thought that it is possible to change the elements into one another, to effect transmutations, which was fairly evidently Augustine's own view. What they, however, were mostly interested in, one gathers, was changing anything else into gold. 9. The reasoning is almost as dense as the element earth; much more so than air made dense by humid exhalations! But it seems to go like this; the living body, consisting mainly of earth, is only capable of movement, and hence of sensation, because of the smaller amount of the fire element in it. But this vitalizing fire element only gets through to the dominant earth element by working on the air in the body, which works on the fluid or water element in it, which finally affects its earthy mass. So deprive the body of heat, and it will take a long time for it to warm up again and recover movement and sensation.