The ancients to the early moderns appear never to have considered the 4 elements in the 3 dimensions in which matter in fact exists. Here, then, are the 4 elements arranged as the 4 points of the 1st Pythagorean solid, a tetrahedron.
J. DeLoache. Child Psychology in Retrospect and Prospect: In Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Institute of Child Development, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, (2002)