a than the Aegean; the Sardinian and Tyrrhenic being the deepest of all. (Outside the pillars of Heracles the sea is shallow owing to the mud, but calm, for it lies in a hollow.) We see, then, that just as single rivers flow from mountains, so it is with the earth as a whole: the greatest volume of water flows from the higher regions in the north. Their alluvium makes the northern seas shallow, while the outer seas are deeper. Some further evidence of the height of the northern regions of the earth is afforded by the view of many of the ancient meteorologists. They Vans Casual Shoes Men believed that the sun did not pass below the earth, but round its northern part, and Vans SK8-Hi Men that it was the height of this which obscured the sun and caused night.
So much to prove that there cannot be sources of the sea and to explain its observed flow.
2
We must now discuss the origin of the sea, if it has an origin, and the cause of its salt and bitter taste.
What made earlier writers consider the sea to be the original and main body of water is this. It seems reasonable to suppose that to be the case on the analogy of the other elements. Each of them has a main bulk which by reason of its mass is the origin of that element, and any parts which change and mix with the other elements come from it. Thus the main body Women Cropped Jeans of fire is in the upper region; that of air occupies the place next inside the region of fire; while the mass of the earth is that round which the rest of the elements are seen to Men Military Jackets lie. So we must clearly look for something analogous in the case of water. But here we can find no such single mass, as in the case of the other elements, except the sea. River water is not a unity, nor is it Women Jumpers stable, but is seen to be in a continuous process of becoming from day to day. It was this difficulty which made people regard the sea as the origin and source of moisture and of all water. And so we find it maintained that rivers not only flow into the sea but originate from it, the salt water becoming sweet by filtration.
But this view involves another difficulty. Męskie Vans Surf If this body of water is the origin and source of all water, why is it salt and not sweet? The reason for this, besides answering this question, will ensure our having a right first conception of the nature of the sea.
The Vans Men earth is surrounded by water, just as that is by the sphere of air, and that again by the sphere called that of Women Socks fire (which is Menn the outermost both on the common view and on ours). Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again Vans Damskie by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.
Hence all my predecessors who supposed that the sun was nourished by moisture are absurdly mistaken. Some go on to say that the solstices are due to this, the reason being Unisex that the same places Vans Plimsolls Shoes Women cannot always supply the sun with nourishment and that without it he links:
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