NATURAL PHILOSOPHY RESTORED

Jean d'Espagnet

I

God is the eternal being, the infinite unity, the radical principle of all things. Its essence is an inexhaustible light; his power, an omnipotence; his will, the sovereign good, and his least desire a perfect work. To whom would like to sound more the depth of his glory, there would come astonishment, silence, and the abyss.

II

Most Sages have taught that from all eternity the World was drawn in its Archetype. But this Archetype, which is all light, folded up on itself like a book before the creation of the Universe, shone only for itself. It opened up and developed, in the production of the World as if giving birth. He made manifest his work, previously hidden in spirit as in a womb, by an extension of his essence, and he thus produced the ideal World, then—as after a redoubled image of the divinity—the actual and material World. This is indicated by Trismegistus,1 when he says that God changed form, and all things were suddenly revealed and converted into light. The World is in truth nothing but an uncovered image of the hidden divinity.

III

The eternal author of things, no less wise in their order than powerful in their creation, has distributed the organic mass of the World in such an admirable order that the highest with the deepest, and the deepest with the highest, are mixed without being confused, and resemble each other by some analogy. So that the extremities of the whole work, thanks to a secret knot, are joined very closely together by imperceptible intermediate degrees, and that all spontaneously contribute to the respect of the supreme moderator, and to the moderation of the lower nature, ready as they are to dissolve at the least command of him who has bound them together. This is why the same Hermes rightly affirms that what is above is like what is below.

IV

He who transfers the supreme authority of the Universe to a nature other than the divine nature, denies that there is a God. Indeed, it is not permissible to recognize an uncreated will that this nature, both to produce and to preserve the individualities of the extended machine, if not the spirit itself of the divine Architect, this spirit which in the beginning hovered over the waters, which made pass from potency to act the seeds of all things confusedly mixed up in chaos, and after he had drawn them out, treated the lower essences by turning the wheel of a constant alteration, to compose and dissolve them according to a geometric fashion.

V

Whoever does not know that this spirit, creator and rector of the World, which is diffused and infused in the works of Nature as by a continuous breath, which is widely diffused in all things, and which moves according to its kind each universal and each singular by a secret and perennial act, is the Soul of the World, he is unaware of the laws of the Universe. For the creator reserves the right to govern what he has created. And it must be confessed that this Spirit, always the same, presides over creation, generation and preservation.

VII

However, he who will recognize that Nature is the universal second cause, at the service of the first, and as an instrument subject to the power of the latter, which moves all things in the material world without mediation and with order, he will not depart from the thought of the Philosophers and Theologians, who have called the first, naturing Nature, and the second. Nature nature.

VII

He who has been instructed in the mysteries of Nature will not dispute that this second Nature, servant of the first, is the Spirit of the Universe, that is to say, an invigorating virtue, and endowed with a secret fecundity, of the light which was created in the beginning, and contracted in the body of the Sun. It is this Spirit of fire that Zoroaster and Heraclitus called an invisible fire, and the Soul of the World.

VIII

The Order of Nature is nothing but the continuation, forming a texture, of the eternal laws which were issued and promulgated by the Supreme Sovereign, and printed in multiple copies for his innumerable peoples, each in his own way. It is under their auspices that the mass of the Universe executes its movements. Life and death occupy in turn the ultimate extremities of this volume, and all the rest is the movement which takes place from one to the other and vice versa.

IX

The World is like the work of a craftsman made on a wheel. Its parts are knotted by mutual embraces like the links of a chain. Nature is placed in the middle as a substitute Worker, who directs the changes of all things, and everywhere represents, repairs incessantly, like the Fabricator himself, those which are worn out.

X

Since this universal world presents itself of a threefold nature, so it is divided into three regions, viz., the super-celestial, the celestial and the lower. The super-celestial, which has been called intelligible, is the highest of all, being entirely spiritual and immortal: it is very close to the divine Majesty. The celestial is situated between the two others: there are attached those bodies of a very perfect species which make it abound in spirits, and spread innumerable virtues and vital breaths through entirely spiritual channels. Exempt from corruption, it does not, however, escape mutation each time its period is completed. Finally, the lower region, which is commonly called the elementary, occupies the smallest and lowest part of the World.As it is in itself all material, it possesses only by borrowing the spiritual gifts and benefits, the principal of which consists of life, and on condition of rendering the tribute to heaven. In its bosom no generation takes place without corruption, no birth takes place without death.

XI

It is intended by the law of Creation that the inferior things obey and serve the average, the average the superior, and the superior the supreme Rector without any other mediation than the latter's will. Such is the order and the common measure of the entire Universe.

XII

As to the Creator alone he belonged to create out of nothing, and to create what pleased him, so to him alone is reserved the right to cause created things to return to nothingness. For whatever bears the character of Being or of substance can no longer be detached from it, and by the law of Nature it is forbidden to pass into non-being. This is why the Trismegistus rightly affirms that nothing dies in the world, but that all things pass and change. For the mixed bodies which are composed of the elements, by the wheel of Nature, are resolved afresh into their elements: “It is the law of Nature to dissolve everything again Into its elements. But without however abolishing it to nothingness. »

XIII

The Philosophers believed that there is a Prime Matter, older than the elements. But as they have had little knowledge of it, they describe it little, and as if under a veil: that it is exempt from qualities and accidents, but that it is the first subject of qualities and accidents; that it is void of quantity, but that through it all things are quantitative; that it is simple, but that in it sit opposites; that unknown to the senses, it is the basis of sensible things; that extended everywhere, it is perceived nowhere; that always desires of forms, she retains none. Root of all bodies, it can only be conceived by an operation of the understanding, without in any way falling under the senses.Finally, being nothing in act, it is all in potency.

XIV

With more caution, Aristotle, who nevertheless believed in the eternity of the world, spoke of a certain primary and universal matter. To avoid its folds, he speaks of it summarily and in ambiguous terms: he says that it is better to believe that there is one and the same matter inseparable from all things, but which differs from them according to reason; that the first bodies and those which are perceptible are composed of it, and that it constitutes their first principle; that it is not separable from them but that it is always allied to them with repugnance; that it is the basis and the subject of opposites, and that from it are issued the elements.

XV
But he would have been a better philosopher, if he had exempted this prime matter from the combat of opposites, and had recognized it as free from all repugnance. For there is no contrariety in the elements themselves, such only resulting from the excess of qualities, as we learn from the common experience of fire and water, in which everything opposite proceeds from the excess of qualities. But in the pure elements, which concur in the generation of the mixtures, these qualities are not contrary to each other, because they are there at rest. And temperate things admit of no contradiction.

XVI

Thales, Heraclitus and Hesiod held that water was the first matter of things. The writer of Holy Genesis seems to give his assent to their opinion, calling this matter an abyss and a water. We can suspect that he meant by that not our water, but a kind of smoke or humid and dark vapour, which wandered here and there, and which was agitated with an uncertain movement, without any law.

XVII

It is not easy to determine anything certain touching this ancient principle of things; for, having been created in darkness, it could in no way emerge in the light of the human spirit. So whether all that Philosophers and Theologians have said about it up to this day is true or not, only the author of Nature knows. And it is enough for anyone who deals with these obscure subjects to say the most probable of them.

XVIII

Some, who agree in this with the opinion of the Rabbis, have believed that there was first a certain material principle, very ancient but obscure and ineffable, called Hyla, which preceded the first matter; that it can be said less a body than an immense shadow, less a thing than the very opaque image of things, or a sort of sooty mask of Being, night full of darkness, and hiding place of shadows; that it is nothing in act, all in potency: something that human understanding can only imagine by dreaming. Our imagination cannot show us this ambiguous principle, this tenebrous Orcus, except that its ears show the Sun to a person blind from birth.

XIX

They also believed that, from this very remote principle, God drew and created a certain abyss covered with mist, formless and without order, which would have been the proximate matter of the elements and of the World. Now the sacred text calls this mass sometimes "empty and deserted earth", sometimes "water", although neither one nor the other was in act, but because it was both in potentiality and in destination. Now we can conjecture that the matter of this mass was rather like a black smoke or vapour, with which was mingled a certain spirit quite numb with cold and darkness.

XX

The division of the superior waters from the inferior ones, as it is evoked in Genesis, seems to be made by the separation of the subtle from the gross, and like that of the thin spirit from the sooty body. This was the work of a luminous spirit which emanated from the divine Word. For the light, which as a spirit is igneous, by separating the heterogeneous, drove down the densest darkness and removed it from the upper region, while spreading over the homogeneous, finer and more spiritual matter, it kindled it like incombustible oil to be an immortal light before the throne of the divine Majesty. It is the empyrean Heaven, the medium between the intelligible world and the material world, which is like the horizon and the border of the two.

XXI

Reason demanded that this tenebrous abyss, or near worldly matter, should be watery, or at least moist, that the whole mass of the heavens and all their machinery might be more conveniently balanced, and by this balance of matter become extended into one continuous body. Because it is characteristic of humidity to be fluid, and the continuity of any body comes from the benefit of the only humor, which is like the glue or the welding of the elements and the bodies. But the fire, acting against the humor by calefaction, rarefies it. Heat is in fact the organ of fire, which by it operates two contrary things in a single action: by separating the moist from the terrestrial, it rarefies the former and condenses the latter.Thus, through the separation of the heterogeneous, the congregation of the homogeneous operates.

XXII

Matter and form are the oldest principles of things.

The spirit, Architect of the World, began the Work of creation with two universal principles, one formal, the other material; to which others in fact respond with the words of the Prophet: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, etc." ”? Except that God, at the beginning of the shaping of matter, distinguished it into two great principles which, one formal, the other material, are heaven and earth. Now by the name "earth" is meant that dark and still formless mass of waters and the abyss, which is indicated by the following words ("The earth was empty and deserted, and darkness was spread over the face of the abyss, etc."). It is she that the Creator has enclosed and bounded by the supreme sky, that is to say the Empyrean,

XXIII

For the Spirit of God, which is the very splendor of the divinity, having spread itself at this moment of creation above the waters, that is to say on the moist and opaque face of the abyss, immediately appeared the light, which in the twinkling of an eye invaded the highest and most subtle part of matter, and surrounded it with a luminous circumference, like a halo, like a flash of lightning, which from the East throws a light of fire to the West, or like the flame, which quickly kindles the smoke which surrounds it. Thus began the first day, but the lowest part of darkness, empty of light, remained night. Thus the darkness was divided into day and night.

XXIV

Of this first Heaven, the formal principle, it is not said that it was empty, deserted and buried in darkness. Which indicates sufficiently that it was distinguished from the underlying dark mass by the sudden light which spread there, because of the vicinity of the glory and the divine majesty, and of the presence of the luminous spirit which resulted from it.

XXV

There were therefore two principles of things created from the beginning, one luminous and close to the spiritual nature, the other entirely corporeal and dark. The former to be the principle of motion, clarity and warmth, the latter to be the principle of numbness, opacity and cold; this active and masculine, this passive and feminine; from the first proceeds in the Elementary World the movement towards generation, whence proceeds Life; from the second, the movement towards corruption, from which death derives its origin. There is the double term of the lower world.

XXVI

But, because Love always tends to extend beyond itself, the Divinity, impatient by nature of its solitude, and considering its beauty, in the light which it had just created, as reflected in a mirror, willed that for its extension and the multiplication of its image this very ardent light should in turn be dilated and communicated. Then the light, by the effect of this igneous spirit which proceeded from the divine thought, and which swirled in a circle, began to act on the nearest darkness. These once overcome and driven back towards the center, a second day shone, and this was the second house of light, or the second heaven. This embraces the whole ethereal region, in the upper part of which so many torches were then sown and fixed,

XXVII

And so that nothing would be lacking in so great a work, traced long ago in divine thought, this same Spirit fought with an igneous and scintillating sword the condensed darkness and the shadow lying below on the opposite side, and drove them back towards the center of the Abyss. Thus was made alive by light the last space of the Heavens, which we call air, or the lower Heaven. And the third day appeared.Now the darkness which in the beginning covered the whole face of the deep, having been lowered into the lower region during those three days by the light which came on, was so condensed there, because of the narrowness of the place and the constriction due to the cold, that it was transmuted into the nature and mass of water, in the midst of which the solid and opaque body of the earth was balanced, After which, by the impulse of this same Spirit, the waters left the face of the earth and flowed around it
. Thus it appeared dry, in order to be able to produce an almost infinite number of kinds of plants, and as many kinds of animals, and also so that it could serve as a domicile for the man who was to command them, supplying them with food, and man with an abundant reservoir of utensils.The earth and the water thus composed but one single globe, the opacity or shadow of which, which is an image of the abyss, continually besieges and envelopes the whole vicinity of the air which is opposed to the sun. She indeed flees the light that forces her into the opposite space that she occupies, and “Always fugitives withdraws similar to one who vanishes”.

XXVIII

Creation of the Sun.

This light, which was diffused in all the spaces of the abyss after the defeat and the engulfment of darkness, it seemed conceivable to the supreme Worker to gather it into a luminous and very noble globe, of the sun, of an excellent size and form, so that the light being confined there might act more effectively and emit its rays with more force; and so that this created light whose nature approaches divine glory, proceeding from uncreated unity, might spread into creatures from unity.

XXIX

All the other bodies draw their light from this luminous torch of the World, for the opacity which we perceive in the globe of the Moon, because of the vicinity of the Earth and the extension of its shadow, persuades us that there is a similar one in all the other globes, although the distance prevents us from perceiving it. For this first and supereminent nature, source of light for all sentient beings, had to belong to Unity, from which things here below had to draw the breath of life. This is why a philosopher said very well: "The sun and man engender man."

XXX

It is not without probability that certain philosophers have said that the Soul of the World was in the sun, and that the sun was placed at the center of the Universe. Indeed it seems that the justice of Nature, and the consequent proportion, demands that the body of the Sun should be equally distant from the source and origin of the created light, that is to say from the empyrean Heaven, and from the tenebrous center which is the Earth, which are the extremities of the whole work. So that this Torch of the World, as nature adjoining and reconciling these two extremes, holds its place in the middle to receive more conveniently from the pole the immense riches of the virtues which it possesses, and transmit them over an equal distance to the lower Earth.

XXXI

Before the created light was gathered into the body of the Sun, the Earth was idle and solitary awaiting the male, so that being made fruitful by his copulation, she might bear all kinds of animals. Because until then, it had only produced aborted and somehow imperfect works, like plants. For the heat of light was before feeble and powerless to overcome damp and cold matter, and could not have extended its forces farther.

XXXII

Light is the universal form.

The raw material therefore received its form from this light, as well as the elements. It is common to them, and passing through them, fulfills there the same function as the blood; it establishes a close love between them, and not hatred and combat as popular opinion would have it. So that, embracing each other by the natural bond of necessity, they coagulate in the varied bodies of the mixed ones, according to their species. And it is the light of the Sun, much stronger than it was before, in other words the universal form, which pours all the natural forms into the work of generation, into the predisposed matter and into the seeds of beings.For whatever individual harbors within him a spark of the nature of this light, the rays of which secretly communicate an active and motivate virtue to the seed.

XXXIII

It was necessary that that portion of the prime matter which was left in the lower region, and also the elements which proceeded from it, should be imbued from the beginning with a slight tint of this first light, in order that they should be able to receive a greater and stronger light in the formation of the mixtures. This is how fire with fire, water with water, light with light, perfectly join and unite, because they are homogeneous in nature.

XXXIV

We can infer from the situation and the effective virtue of the Sun, that it performs in the Universe the function of the heart, from which life spreads everywhere. For light is the vehicle of life, as it is its source and proximate cause. And the souls of living beings are rays of celestial light, which breathe life into things, with the sole exception of the soul of man, which is a ray of light upon heavenly and uncreated.

XXXV

God expressed his divinity in the Sun by a triple image. First, by Unity; for Nature does not suffer the multiplicity of Suns any more than the Divinity the plurality of Gods, so that from one all things start and depend. Then, by the Trinity, or the threefold office; for the Sun, as a vicar of God, distributes all the benefits of Nature by its light, its movement and its heat, from which proceeds life, which is the last and most perfect act of Nature in our World, beyond which it cannot pass, but only return to itself, Now from light and movement proceeds heat, as the third person of the Trinity proceeds from the first and the second. Finally, in that God, who is an eternal, infinite and incomprehensible light,can manifest itself and make itself seen in the World only by light. Let no one therefore be surprised if the Eternal Sun wished to clothe with so many privileges his most perfect image, the celestial Sun, of which he was the sculptor, for he placed his tabernacle there.

XXXVI

The Sun is a limpid mirror of the divine Glory; for this glory being elevated above the senses and the forces of material creatures, she has made herself a mirror whose splendor could reflect the rays of her eternal light on all her works, and cause her to be recognized by this reflection, since it is forbidden for mortal nature to look immediately at the divine light. The Sun is the royal eye of divinity, which by its presence grants freedom and life to those who supplicate it.

XXXVII

Creation of Man.

The supreme work of the Artisan, and in a way the navel or the crown of all the work, consisted in producing the man, summary of the manufacture of the world and image of the divine nature. The creator placed his birth in the sixth part of the light, which was the last of the work, as being the rich furniture of all nature, where all the gifts of the higher and lower powers came to converge in human nature, as in another Pandora. Thus to the things of the universe already ordered, man was added as the only complement that the Work lacked, the one for which it gave a purer clay, in order to model such a precious clay vase. The globe here below and its inhabitants were asking for such a Rector, whose yoke they could never tire of bearing.

XXXVIII

On the sixth day of creation and on the third after the birth of the Sun, man arose from the Earth. The greatest mystery cast its shadow over the time of this production, and over this number of days. Just as, indeed, on the fourth day of creation all that was light in the sky coagulated into a single Sun, so on the third day of the birth of this Sun, which was the sixth of creation, the mud of the Earth received the breath of life and raised him up in the form of a living man, the image of God. Thus on the fourth day, ie, the fourth millennium after the origin of the world, the uncreated Sun, ie the infinite divine nature, which previously could not be contained by any term, wanted to be shrunk and in some way limited to the human body. And on the third day,that is to say the third millennium after the birth and the first advent of this uncreated Sun, and on the end of the sixth day, that is to say the sixth millennium from the creation, will take place the glorious resurrection of human nature in the second advent of the Supreme Judge: which has been again represented to us by his blessed Resurrection, which took place on the third day. This is how the Prophet hid the mysterious destiny and duration of the world in Genesis. which took place on the third day. This is how the Prophet hid the mysterious destiny and duration of the world in Genesis. which took place on the third day. This is how the Prophet hid the mysterious destiny and duration of the world in Genesis.

XXXIX

Although the Almighty could have created the world when he pleased him, even in a moment and in the twinkling of an eye, if he had so wished, for he said, and all things were made, nevertheless the order of the principles of creation and of the elements of nature, which presents a succession of created beings with relation from the first to the last, was traced in the divine understanding before nature was created: an order which the Sacred Philosopher seems to have expounded in Genesis, rather than the work of the creation.

XL

The three pieces of raw material information.

It seems that the raw material was informed in three general ways. The first information was made in this place where the irrational luminous form met with a portion of matter incomparably weaker than it, and without any proportion of the forces of one and the other, as in the empyrean sky, where it began to act on matter. For having there an almost infinite virtue, it has as it were swallowed up matter, and changed it into a nature almost entirely spiritual, and exempt from all accident.

XLI

The second information was made in the place where the forces of form and matter met with accuracy and equality. It is in this way that the ethereal sky and the bodies that populate it have been informed: for then the action of light, whose force is very powerful, has reached such a point that by illuminating and subtilizing matter marvelously, it has exempted it from all blemish, and even from the venom of corruption and death. It had to be and it was true and full information.

XLII

The third way in which matter has been informed is where form has been weakest, as has happened in our elementary region, though in a different way: there the insatiable appetite of matter, which grows angry and violent at its base by its excess and overabundance, which is defect and imperfection, can never be satisfied, nor its infirmity cured, because of the remoteness and distance from the formal principle. It is from this that matter, not being here below at will and fully informed, always sighs for a new form: when it has finally received it, it communicates to it like a dowry to a husband an ample share of corruption and imperfections. This sorrow, stubborn, rebellious and inconstant always burns for new embraces,

XLIII

It is correct to conclude that the origin and the ferment of alteration and corruption, even the fatal venom of death, arrive at the elements and the mixtures here below, not because of the contradiction of their qualities, but rather because of the matrix and the poisonous menstruation of tenebrous matter. For the form having found itself feeble and powerless in the union that has been made of it here, where matter has prevailed as primary and radical, it has not been able to purge it of its flaw and its imperfection. This is confirmed by the sacred text, where it should be noted that it is said that our first father was created not immortal because of his matter, and that in order that he should be free from earthly corruption and from the original stain of this matter,God placed in the earthly paradise a tree abundant in the fruits of life and which was like a rampart and a remedy against the fragility of matter and the servitude of decay and death. The use and the approach of it were forbidden to him after his fall and the sentence which made him mortal.

XLIV

There were therefore from the beginning only two simple principles of nature from which all other things proceeded, without any being prior: that is to say, the first matter, and its universal form, from the coupling of which the elements were born, as second principles which are nothing other than the first matter variously informed; it becomes by their mixture the second matter of things, which is most soon subject to accidents, and which suffers the vicissitudes of generation and corruption. Such are the degrees, such is the order of the principles of nature.

XLV

Those who admit a third principle, besides matter and form, namely privation, do an insult to Nature: since it would be against her design that she would admit any principle which would be contrary to her end: for the end which she assigns herself in engendering being the acquisition of a new form, to which privation is contrary, it follows that this principle cannot be in the intention of Nature. They would have spoken more truthfully if they had recognized love, and the inclination of matter to form, for a principle of Nature. For matter being deprived of its first form, longs for a new one: but the privation is purely nothing but the absence of the form, to which for this effect the august name of Nature's principle is not due.

XLVI

Corruption approaches and participates more in generation than does deprivation, since corruption is a movement which disposes matter to generation by successive degrees of alteration which it introduces into it. But privation does not act, nor executes anything in the work of generation, unlike corruption, which stirs up matter and prepares it to become susceptible to form, and like a mediator renders it the service of matchmaker so that matter may more easily satisfy its natural lust, and by its ministry obtain the coupling of form. That is why corruption is an instrumental and necessary cause of generation, while privation is nothing but a pure deficiency of the active and formal principle,

XLVII

The harmony of the Universe consists of the diverse and graduated information of matter. Because from the weighted mixture of the raw material and the form proceeded the difference of the elements, then that of the regions of the World. What in few words, but very truthfully, Hermès indicated to us, when he said that what is above is like what is below. Indeed both higher and lower things are made of the same matter and the same form, but they differ because of their mixtures, their situation and their perfection. From this derives the distinction of the parts of the World and the hierarchy of the whole of Nature.

XLVIII

One must therefore believe that the prime matter, after it has received the information and the distinction of things from the light, has entirely emigrated outside of itself and that, transmitted in the elements and the mixtures which they formed, it has been totally exhausted in the completion of the work of the Universe; it must be said that as soon as the things which were previously hidden in it were manifested and produced, it itself began to hide there, and can in no way be separated from them.

XLIX

We are left with a copy of that ancient confused mass, or prime matter, in that dry water which does not wet, and which is found in subterranean caves or even on the shores of lakes; it impregnates all things with an abundant seed and becomes volatile at the slightest heat; if one knew how to draw from it the intrinsic elements when it is closely united to its male, and to separate them artistically, then to conjoin them again, one could boast of having discovered a very precious mystery of Nature and Art, and even a summary of the celestial essence.

I

He who seeks the simple elements of bodies, separated from all mixture, wearies himself in vain labor, for they are unknown to the human mind. In fact, what are commonly held to be elements are not simple, but are mixed, although inseparably linked to themselves. Earth, Water, Air are rather integral parts of the Universe than elements, but with good reason; we can say that they are the matrices of the simple elements.

LI

The bodies of Earth, Water and Air, which are separated in their sensible sphere, are different from the elements which nature uses in the work of generation, and which composes the mixed bodies. Because the latter are imperceptible to our senses in the mixture that nature makes of them, because of their tenuity and subtlety, until they reach the consistency of a palpable body, and are converted into dense matter, which is the opinion of Lucretius: "It must be admitted that all things are composed of insensible principles". Those who compose the lower region of the universe are not admitted into the work of a perfect generation because they are too thick and impure, not sufficiently digested, and are rather shadows and simulacra of elements than true elements.

LII

Nevertheless, we can call by the same names as ours those elements which are imperceptible before their mingling in the absolute and perfect work, and which industrious nature uses to shape its works; for the parts of the mixture correspond in a certain proportion to the parts of the world and are in some way analogous to them: one can name the most solid parts "earth", the most humi4s "water", the most delicate "air", the natural heat "fire" of nature and the occult and essential virtues without inconvenience "celestial and astral natures", or even "quintessence". And thus any mixture whatsoever will boast by analogy of the name "microcosm."

LIII

He who could extract the first elements which serve for the generation of things could also compose from them the individuals of these same things, and again resolve these individuals into their elements.

LIV

Those therefore who work to seek the elements of nature to compose a body, or after having composed it with the artifice which nature uses, to resolve it once more into its elements, let them have recourse to the Author of nature itself: for these first elements are entirely within the domain and knowledge of nature, and have been left from the beginning to its discernment, while remaining unknown to human art and industry.

LV

The element of nature in the mixtures is precisely a very simple and very pure portion of the first matter, distinguished by its own difference and its qualities, and which forms the essential part in their material composition.

LVI

By elements of nature are meant the material principles, some of which are purer and more perfect than others according as the virtue of form is greater and stronger. Most are distinguished by rarity and density: those who are the rarest and closest to a spiritual nature, those are the purest, the lightest, the most apt for action and movement.

LVII

Venerable antiquity divided the empire of the world between three brothers, all sons and co-heirs of Saturn, because it recognized three natures of the elements or more truly three parts in the universe. Indeed by almighty Jupiter having obtained fate the empire of the sky, armed with a triple thunderbolt, superior to his other brothers, the initiates to his mysteries understood the ethereal region, which is the place of the celestial bodies, and which assumes the empire over the lower regions. Below him they placed Juno, wife of Jupiter, as mistress of the lower region of the sky, that is to say, of our air: because this region is all cloudy with vapours, damp, cold, and in some way impure and very close to the feminine temperament.But also because it is subject to the decrees of the higher bodies, that it is susceptible to their impressions, and communicates them to us, insinuating itself into the things whose nature is thick to bend them and soften them to the orders imprinted by the celestial things, and finally because the male and the female differ only in sex, and not in species, they did not want the air or the lower sky to be an element different from the upper sky in essence and in kind, but only different as to place and accidents. . To Neptune, divinity of the sea, they assigned the empire of the waters. By Pluto, king of the underworld and god of riches, they wanted to hear the terrestrial globe filled with treasures, after which men sigh and work, pursuing them like a ghost of glory.These sages therefore admitted only three parts of the Universe, or three elements, if we want to call them so. And because they wanted to subsume the element of fire under the ethereal region, they depicted their Jupiter armed with a thunderbolt.

LVIII

Experience teaches us that all mixed bodies are resolved into dry and wet, like all animal excrement. Which proves that mixed bodies are composed of two sensible elements only, corresponding to our earth and our water, in which nevertheless the others reside in virtue and in power. For the air, or element of the lower heaven, escapes our senses, because with regard to us it is in some way of the nature of spiritual things. As for the fire of nature, because it is a formal principle, it cannot in any way, by any resolution one makes of it, despite all the secrets of the art, be perceived separately from things, for the nature of forms is not subject to the appreciation of the senses, for it is entirely spiritual.

LIX

The earth is the body and the silt of the condensed Universe; also it is very heavy, and occupies its center. Now it must be taken for granted that if it is of a dry nature, it is by accident, in spite of common opinion. It must also be taken for granted that it is cold, because it retains more than the others something of the opaque and dark nature of the raw material. For shadow and darkness are the receptacles and retreats of the cold; so they flee the light, and for fear of being violated by it, they are always diametrically opposed to it. Now the earth, thanks to its extreme density, is the mother and the basis of darkness, being very difficult to access to light and heat. That's why she becomes completely frozen by a violent cold.Black bile is deemed the coldest of all the humors because it partakes of earth, and belongs to its domain, as earth comes under Saturn which gives a cold and melancholy temper. In the same way, the productions which are formed in the bosom of the earth, and which are of an earthly substance, such as marble and stones, are of a very cold nature; though we must judge otherwise of the metals, which are more of the nature of the air, and contain in them much fire, because of the sparks of the hidden fire of Nature which are infused into them, and of the sulphurous spirit which coagulates their humid and fluid matter;It is otherwise in the productions which are made in the sea, as can be clearly seen in amber, coral and various other things which are born in the sea and in the rivers, and which are of a warm temperament. This is why we know by reason and by experience that the sovereign cold is due to the earth and not to the water.
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