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1 How Nature Reduces the Altered Chaotic Principles, Nitre and Salt, to Their First State: That Is, How She Makes Them Vapour Again
Chapter outline
Generation and corruption proceed from the same chaotic water
Return through nitre, salt, water, and vapour
Transition from universal principles to the animal sphere
As has been demonstrated above, nature brings forth each and every thing from the ancient primordial chaos and from regenerated chaos: rain, dew, and snow-water. Everything comes from these, whether in the volatile state in which it reaches us on earth from the air, or in the somewhat fixed, bodily form visible as saltpetre and salt. Conversely, through this same chaotic water, in its volatile and fixed states, each and every thing is again destroyed, resolved, dissolved, and corrupted, and brought back to its first condition, from which it originally arose: namely, into saltpetre and salt; these into water; and the water into vapours. Nature produces her offspring by ascending from the stated principles to their appointed perfection. Then she turns about and corrupts everything again by descending all the way to its first beginning.
How nature reduces these fixed seeds, saltpetre and salt, back into water and then into vapours has been shown in the preceding part, in the chapter on the outflow of the earth and elsewhere, especially in the discussion of minerals. There is no need to repeat here how they break forth in the form of vapour, by way of the centre of the earth, as far as the air, and so on. With these universal principles established, let us therefore begin with the adjacent animal sphere and consider how its members undergo corruption and return to their first state.