Timaeus

​Timaeus: But the most numerous forms of waters which are mixed with one another—the class as a whole, filtered through plants from the earth, being called ‘saps’—having acquired non-uniformity individually through their mixtures, have provided on the one hand many nameless classes, but four forms which are fiery, having become especially transparent, have received names of their own. That which warms the soul along with the body is ‘wine’; and that which is smooth and divides the sight, and for these reasons is bright and glistening to look at, and appears oily in form, is ‘pitch’, ‘castor-oil’, and ‘oil’ itself, as well as all other things of the same power; and that which diffuses as far as the nature of the contractions about the mouth, providing sweetness by this power, has received ‘honey’ as the most general appellation for all of them; and that which dissolves the flesh by burning, being a foamy class separated from all saps, was named ‘acid juice’. As for the forms of earth, that which is filtered through water becomes ‘stony body’ in the following manner. When the mixed water is broken up in the mixture, it changes into the form of air; and the air having been generated rises to its own place. But no empty space remained above them; therefore it pushed the neighboring air. And this, being heavy, being pushed and poured around the mass of earth, squeezed it violently and pushed it together into the seats from which the new air was rising; and the earth, compressed by the air so as to be indissolubly joined with water, is composed as ‘rock’, of which that composed of equal and uniform parts is more beautiful and transparent, while the opposite is uglier. But that from which all moisture has been snatched away by the speed of fire, and which is composed as more brittle than the former, is this which we have named the class of ‘pottery’. And sometimes, when some moisture is left behind, the fusible earth generated by fire, when it is cooled, becomes a ‘stone’ having a black color. And in turn, in these same ways, two things isolated from a large mixture of water, consisting of finer parts from the earth and being salty, having become half-congealed and soluble again by water: the one, a class which cleanses oil and earth, is ‘soda’, and the other, which is well-suited in the associations concerning the sensation of the mouth, became, according to reason, a god-beloved body, ‘salts’. On the other hand, the common compounds of both, which are not soluble by water but are by fire, are congealed in this way due to the following cause. Fire and air do not melt masses of earth; for being by nature smaller than the composition of its intervals, passing through many open spaces without forcing their way, and leaving it undissolved, they provide it as unmelted. But since the parts of water are by nature larger, making their passage by force, they dissolve and melt it.