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[63a] it would never be carried away to the extremities because of their uniformity in all respects; nay, even were a man to travel round it in a circle he would often call the same part of it both “above” and “below,” according as he stood now at one pole, now at the opposite.1 For seeing that the Whole is, as we said just now, spherical, the assertion that it has one region “above” and one “below” does not become a man of sense.

Now the origin of these names and their true meaning which accounts for our habit of making these verbal distinctions even about the whole Heaven,


1 i.e., “above” and “below” are purely relative terms.

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