10. On the bursting of this immense repository there sprang forth large masses, equal in number to the planets visible in this universe, and resembling our earth, but which being yet without form, and not balanced in any ether, pressed upon the great surface of their parent; for no force was as yet operative to carry them in another direction.
(The origin of the planets.)
Thus they lay scattered like suckling masses near the burning bosom of their father, and, as it were, at his teats.
[2] But presently when the sun, the folding-doors being unlocked and the gates thrown open to the empty universe, had begun to cast forth fiery exhalations from his now full and swelling mouth, and to distend it with his powers and forces, he first filled the neighboring and presently the more remote distances with auras and thus with spaces. 1
(The origin of the ether.)
Hence arose ether, which being diffused around the sun, and at the same time also around the masses which encompass him, wrapped the latter, as it were, in swathings or spires, and encompassed them with spheres suited to the mobility of each. In the circumferences of their spheres he placed a vertical point, which he drew into perpetual orbs, and from them produced a central gyration, in which the mass was involved.
[3] Hence it came to pass that those bodies, being as yet fluids, and as it were molten, assumed an orbicular form from the concourse of so many centripetal forces.
(The infancy of the earth and the planets.)
These now became orbs, and of no weight, as it were, because in centres, and being conveyed and put in rotation by the surrounding ether, they first began to creep and then to walk around the sun, and presently, like little children, to dance and leap, and by quick and short circuits to make a commencement of years, and a rotation of days, and thus to enter upon their periods.
Фусноти:
1. The ether itself, with which the solar universe is filled, and whence spaces and times, in a word, nature herself, as something, exist, could not derive its birth from any other source than from the same principle and fountain; for unless this was the case, all concordance or agreement must perish.
(The origin and nature of the ether.)
And if we examine that ether from its own phenomena, we shall find it to be of no other nature than that of the substances which excite the solar focus itself; nor of any other form than the supreme form in nature, which is called the supra-celestial. But those substances were thus only formed anew in order that they might afterwards receive the rays of their sun and transmit them when received to the most remote limits of the universe; in this beginning of existences, therefore, it is not said that a ray bursts forth from his burning furnace, but an exhalation, that is, his own matter.
