Whoever holds those four primordial qualities to be innate and essential to things themselves and to their Elements, minglable at Nature’s will and therefore not opposed, will not be mistaken. For they are like four organs or instruments which Nature uses in carrying out her alterations and generations.

Nature practises the potter’s art, for her whole occupation is to shape her matter in a circle. Those four qualities are like little wheels, by whose aid she gradually and wisely gives form to her works through a slow, circular motion.

Of those four wheels, two—moisture and dryness—belong more closely to matter, because Nature turns matter between these two limits and accomplishes her successive changes. These two qualities are closer to matter because they are more subject to being acted upon and changed. The other two, heat and cold, are more active, because in their turns they alter and transform the former pair. The former undergo action; the latter act more, and are like the active instruments with which Nature handles matter capable of being acted upon.

Let us therefore reject that doctrine of contraries as contrary to Nature’s concord. With the Academy’s kind permission, may we erase it with an iron stylus from philosophy’s corrupted register and inscribe in its place the emblem of Concord. Nature acknowledges Concord as her companion and contemporary; through her aid, the gentle union of active with passive things is brought about in every generation.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT.

Those who, following the received opinion, maintain that the four elements of things oppose one another must admit a fifth as a knot and bond of concord, a herald and maker of peace. Otherwise, the elements could admit neither perfect mixture nor any tempering in the work of generation. Instead, they would wander aimlessly, without rudder or pilot, across Nature’s vast sea, finding neither harbour nor birth, and would thus deprive Nature’s procreative genius of its end.

For if those four are believed to wage an everlasting mutual hatred because of their conflicting qualities, they could neither be united nor reconciled in the generation of mixed bodies. Rather, rushing into mutual conflict, they would bring Nature a miscarriage instead of a birth, unless their opposed endeavours were turned towards peace and love through the benefit of a certain fifth nature, heavenly and tempering, which, itself free of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, would introduce a tempered balance.

What they call the fifth element is an incorruptible ethereal spirit flowing down into these lower things from the light, motion, and power of the heavenly bodies. It prepares the elements for mixture and life, and keeps Nature’s individual beings from destruction as far as their own stability allows. Hence the initiates of hidden philosophy have deservedly named it the salt of Nature, the bond of the elements, and the spirit of the universe.

THE FIRST CONTRARIETY WAS BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARKNESS.

If there was any contrariety among the principles of things, it certainly existed between light and darkness, because their respective qualities were opposed. Yet those qualities received a tempered balance through the union of the two principles; from extremes they emerged intermediate and tempered, and in that condition passed from the first principles into the second principles, namely the elements.

Only extremes are contrary to one another, because of the intensity of their opposed qualities. Things arising from the mixture of extremes do not oppose one another at all, because they are intermediate. Therefore, Nature’s elements should by no means be regarded as contraries: they are intermediate and have flowed from the union and tempering of the two extremes, light and darkness.

* Psalm 18.