The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: not encircled by sinews; and also in order that the sensations from both
sides might be distributed over the whole body. And next, they ordered the
water-courses of the body in a manner which I will describe, and which will
be more easily understood if we begin by admitting that all things which
have lesser parts retain the greater, but the greater cannot retain the
lesser. Now of all natures fire has the smallest parts, and therefore
penetrates through earth and water and air and their compounds, nor can
anything hold it. And a similar principle applies to the human belly; for
when meats and drinks enter it, it holds them, but it cannot hold air and
fire, because the particles of which they consist are smaller than its own
structure.
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