The Elements Obey One Master

Things of conflicting and opposite natures, then, would not have reconciled themselves unless there were One higher than they and Lord over them to unite them. The elements themselves obey him as slaves obey a master. Instead of each looking to its own nature and fighting with its neighbor, they recognize the Lord who has united them and live in harmony with one another: opposed by nature, but at peace by the will of him who guides them. For if their mingling into one were not due to a higher authority, how could the heavy mingle and combine with the light, the wet with the dry, the round with the straight, fire with cold, or the sea with the earth, or the sun with the moon, or the stars with the heaven, and the air with the clouds, when the nature of each is unlike that of the other? There would be great strife among them: one burning, another chilling; the heavy dragging downward, the light pulling the opposite way, upward; the sun giving light while the air spread darkness. Yes, even the stars would have been at odds with one another, since some are placed above and others below, and night would have refused to make way for day, but would have stayed on to fight and struggle against it.

If that were so, we would see not an ordered universe but disorder, not arrangement but anarchy, not a system but everything out of system, not proportion but disproportion. For in such general strife and conflict, either all things would be destroyed, or only the element that won would appear. And even that would show the disorder of the whole. For left alone and deprived of the help of the others, it would throw the whole out of gear, just as a single hand and foot left alone would not keep the body whole. For what sort of universe would it be if only the sun appeared, or only the moon went on her course, or if there were only night, or always day? Or what sort of harmony would it be if the heaven existed alone without the stars, or the stars without the heaven? Or what good would there be if there were only sea, or if the earth were there alone, without waters and without the other parts of creation? Or how could man, or any animal, have appeared on the earth if the elements were at strife with one another, or if one of them prevailed, and that one was not enough to make up bodies? For nothing in the world could have been made of heat alone, or cold, or wet, or dry; everything would have been without arrangement or combination. And not even the one element that seemed to prevail would have been able to survive without the help of the rest, for that is how each one survives now.