"Every element" here obviously means the sphere of each element; "holownesse" means concavity and "in convers" means 'on the reverse side.' The meaning of the passage is, then, that Troilus' spirit ascends to the concave side of the seventh sphere from which he can look down upon the spheres of the elements, which have their convex surfaces towards him. This passage is of particular interest for the further reason that it shows that even in Chaucer's century people still thought of the spheres as having material existence. The place and order of the elements is more definitely suggested in a passage from _Boethius_ in which philosophical contemplation is figuratively described as an ascent of thought upward through the spheres: "'I have, forsothe, swifte fetheres that surmounten the heighte of hevene. When the swifte thought hath clothed it-self in the fetheres, it despyseth the hateful erthes, and surmounteth the roundnesse of the grete ayr; and it seeth the cloudes behinde his bak; and passeth the heighte of the region of the fyr, that eschaufeth by the swifte moevinge of the firmament, til that he areyseth him in-to the houses that beren the sterres, and ioyneth his weyes with the sonne Phebus, and felawshipeth the wey of the olde colde Saturnus.'"[44] In this passage all the elemental regions except that of water are alluded to and in the order which, in the Middle Ages, they were supposed to follow. When in the _Hous of Fame_, Chaucer is borne aloft into the heavens by Jupiter's eagle, he is reminded of this passage in Boethius and alludes to it: "And tho thoughte I upon Boece, That writ, 'a thought may flee so hye, With fetheres of Philosophye, To passen everich element; And whan he hath so fer y-went, Than may be seen, behind his bak, Cloud, and al that I of spak.'"[45] Empedocles, as we have seen, taught that the variety in the universe was caused by the binding together of the four elements in different proportions through the harmonizing principle of love, or by their separation through hate, the principle of discord. We find this idea also reflected in Chaucer who obviously got it from Boethius. Love is the organizing principle of the universe; if the force of love should in any wise abate, all things would strive against each other and the universe be transformed into chaos.[46] The elements were thought to be distinguished from one another by peculiar natures or attributes. Thus the nature of fire was _hot_ and _dry_, that of water _cold_ and _moist_, that of air _cold_ and _dry_, and that of earth _hot_ and _moist_.[47] Chaucer alludes to these distinguishing attributes of the elements a number of times, as, for example, in _Boethius_, III.: Metre 9. 14 ff.: "Thou bindest the elements by noumbres proporciounables, that the colde thinges mowen acorden with the hote thinges, and the drye thinges with the moiste thinges";