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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: is the heaven which is commonly spoken of by us as the ether, and of which
our own earth is the sediment gathering in the hollows beneath. But we who
live in these hollows are deceived into the notion that we are dwelling
above on the surface of the earth; which is just as if a creature who was
at the bottom of the sea were to fancy that he was on the surface of the
water, and that the sea was the heaven through which he saw the sun and the
other stars, he having never come to the surface by reason of his
feebleness and sluggishness, and having never lifted up his head and seen,
nor ever heard from one who had seen, how much purer and fairer the world
above is than his own. And such is exactly our case: for we are dwelling
in a hollow of the earth, and fancy that we are on the surface; and the air
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