Water is the basis and root of everything moist, indeed moisture itself, from which every moist thing takes its name. Water may therefore rightly be defined as the source and principle of the moist element, or of moisture; its proper work is to wet things with its liquid. Things are called moist when they contain moisture or watery liquid in greater or lesser measure. Moisture can receive every quality. Thus blood and yellow bile are humours imbued with their own heat, although they have their basis in the element of water. Strong water and similar substances possess a caustic, fiery power; burning water and many essences of things extracted in the body of oil or water abound in heat, although water, their root, is cold. For nature first imprints the varied signatures of her powers upon the moist element and infuses her principal qualities into its very root. Moisture is nature's first subject, upon which her first care and labour are spent. In its liquid she dilutes and mixes her many colours and indelible tinctures. Spiritual gifts first communicate themselves to it; in it they first dwell and begin to act.

The lower waters, divided into two, occupy distinct regions. One part, adjoining earth, rests upon it as its proper base and forms a single globe with it. The other flies upwards and travels with wandering motion through the neighbouring tract of air. There, fashioning for itself masked images of bodies and manifold phantom shapes, it hangs suspended and roams here and there.

At all times a great part of the waters dwells above and, driven here and there by the blowing winds, traverses the various tracts of air. This was established by divine wisdom's decree from the day of creation so that earth's face might emerge open and free for things to be generated. For the beds of seas and rivers would not suffice to receive all the water. Indeed, if it all rushed down when heaven's barriers were released, it would overtop earth's level ground and perhaps reach the highest mountains. We may conjecture that such an outpouring once caused the deluge.

Water is not raised into vapour by heat alone, nor does it gather into cloud by cold alone. The powers of the sun and stars contribute greatly to both, not only by multiplying the elements' powers but also by attracting and retaining moisture to a greater or lesser degree through a certain magnetic force, according to their different positions and the configuration of heaven. Hence we observe differences in the constitution of years and seasons. For that mass of waters is held poised aloft not by cold or the air's solidity alone, but by the powerful command of the higher bodies.

Lest divine justice lack its punishments for vengeance, it made an ocean that could fly and hang threateningly over our heads, and placed the fiery darts of lightning above us, so that human audacity, which could not be bent by love, might be checked by terror.

Those who attribute the greatest moistness to air because it is difficult to contain within a boundary of its own but easy to contain within another's are greatly mistaken. This is proper to thin and fluid bodies, not to moist ones, and therefore applies more to fire and heaven, whose natures are rarer, than to water or air. For rare bodies, because they flow of themselves in every direction, cannot remain within their own boundary and therefore need another's. Only dense and firm bodies are confined by their own outline and surface. Subtle bodies cannot do this, because through their thinness they flow and pour themselves out; the rarer they are, the more they flow out and the less they hold together. It follows that air is a rarer body, but not a moister one.

AIR.

Air has no intense quality of itself, but sometimes borrows one from elsewhere. Its nature is intermediate between higher and lower bodies, so it readily assumes the qualities and affections of its neighbours. Hence its lower region is felt to have different temperaments as the seasons vary. This inconstancy is brought about by changes in the nearer, thicker bodies, namely water and earth, whose condition heat and cold readily alter.

Air in its entirety is heaven, the field of the universe, nature's sieve, through which the powers and influences of other bodies are transmitted. It is an intermediate nature joining all the scattered natures of the universe; the subtlest smoke, kindled by celestial fire into light like an immortal flame; the subject of light and shadow, day and night. It cannot tolerate a vacuum. Foremost among transparent things, it most readily receives almost every quality and affection, yet retains none with great tenacity. It is close to spiritual nature and is therefore designated by the name spirit when the philosophers' secrets are discussed.

The lower region of air resembles the neck and upper part of an alembic. Vapours rising through it and carried to the top are condensed by cold; soon, resolved into water, they fall back under their own weight. Thus nature rectifies and enriches water through diligent distillations, raising it and repeatedly returning it. In such operations of nature, earth is the cucurbit and receiving vessel. This tract of air nearer to us, bounded by the region of clouds as by its vaulted roof, is therefore denser and less pure than the other, higher regions.

The middle region of air is not the one in which clouds gather and flashes of lightning and thunder occur; that is the upper part and boundary of the lower region. Rather, the region above the clouds, to which watery nature is prevented by its weight from rising, should be called the middle one. Sulphurous exhalations, however, freed from the weight of vapours, ascend to it and wander through it; there they grow hot through their own motion or another's and catch fire. Such are the fiery meteors of various kinds seen in the middle region. Hence we may conjecture that it abounds in heat and moisture, not watery but fatty moisture of the kind that feeds fire. There is much temperateness and tranquillity in it, because it is not pressed by turbulent winds, and only the lighter excretions of lower nature are carried up into it.

The upper region, near the moon, is wholly airy, not fiery, as has long been falsely accepted in the schools. There lies the tranquil dwelling of the purest air, close to the ethereal tract in nature as well as position, for no soot from the lower abyss pollutes it. Temperateness there is supreme, and its purity differs little from that of the neighbouring heaven. A philosopher should be ashamed to invent a sphere of fire in that place, for such a fire, violating nature's laws, would long ago have laid waste the fabric of the universe.