That the mixture of contraries—light and darkness—produces tempered things rather than contraries is sufficiently indicated by the song of the prophet king, breaking forth in these words about eternal light: * “He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was beneath his feet,” and so forth. “He made darkness his hiding place; his tabernacle was round about him,” and so forth. The very fountain of uncreated light, in order to show human eyes the splendour of his infinite glory, veiled it in cloud and dark mist as in a garment, and brought darkness beside light, so that from both extremes he might produce a tempered light and moderate the flashing of immeasurable light beyond human powers. Philosophers also affirm that the rainbow, given by God as a sign and token of the covenant made with human beings and of divine grace, is produced from a mixture of darkness and light. Thus this very symbol of tempered divine vengeance, resulting from contraries, was to be blended from varied colours in the greatest harmony and friendship.

THE PARTS OF THE WORLD ARE NEITHER ELEMENTS NOR CHANGED INTO ONE ANOTHER.

Those who have taught that earth, water, air, and fire are the world’s elements, distinct in their respective spheres, and that they change into one another by mutual interchange, have investigated Nature’s secrets badly. It will be safer to call them integral parts of the world, or workshops of the elements. For the world’s elements do not display themselves to the senses separated into their own regions; they lie concealed in their matrices until they come together in the generation of mixed bodies and constitute a body. Those parts of the world cannot change into one another, because they differ too greatly. Nor can the single common quality by which those natures are bound together accomplish so great a change that heterogeneous substances become homogeneous—indeed, become entirely the same.

If those four things believed to be elements exchanged their own natures and dwellings in turn, as though by trading at fairs, the entire mass of this world would be enslaved to chance and random motion and would move in perpetual fluctuation. Yet God has established it with a certain and constant law and station, and with distinct parts. For earth would soon become water; from water would come air, from air fire, and conversely. In this way the centre would migrate to the circumference and the circumference to the centre; the outermost and middle parts of the world would of their own accord withdraw from their stations. After a long succession of ages, Nature’s order would be wholly reversed, the highest mingling with the lowest and the lowest with the highest in perpetual confusion. Whoever imagines the world’s fabric ordered in this way bids us call so excellent a work chaos and abyss rather than a world—something Nature, the friend of order, abhors.

EARTH AND FIRE ARE NOT CHANGED INTO ONE ANOTHER.

Those who teach that earth and fire, the extreme bodies of this lower world, take one another’s places—assuming, without conceding, a sphere of fire—deceive themselves and mock the truth. Their natures are too far apart and too opposed to permit such interchange. Earth’s extreme coldness, grossness, and heaviness so oppose fire’s extreme heat, subtlety, and lightness that they do not allow a mutual conversion. Moreover, earth, being fixed, does not yield to fire and scorns its powers, if the opinions of chymists and common experience are to be trusted. Nothing flies off from it except an oily or watery moisture, both foreign to earth itself. If anything could change into elemental fire, it would have to become light and volatile so as to pass into fire’s sphere and nature. Since earth is the heaviest of all, and therefore the centre, and the most fixed of all, and therefore the least volatile, how can it change into fire and be raised into fire’s sphere? Or how can fire, the highest and lightest of all, be thrust down into earth against Nature’s laws and be essentially united with it? Water and fire would exchange more easily, because they are one degree closer than earth and fire.

Those who have believed that exhalations raised from the terrestrial region into the air are therefore earthy and converted into the element of fire because they catch fire there are greatly mistaken on both points. They are not of an earthy nature, but rather an airy one. For our air, moist through contact with water, acquires oiliness while lying long inactive in earth’s dry bosom, and through association with earth tempers moisture with dryness. When heat presses it to exhale through earth’s pores and fissures—or when an abundance of matter multiplies its strength—it bursts out of its shaken and broken prison with noise and crashing. Hence many earthquakes and chasms are experienced, often with devastation. Having gained its freedom, that exhalation flies into the region of light bodies and there, more fully digested into sulphurous matter by wandering motion and heat, catches fire. This matter is therefore not truly earthy, since it is averse to heaviness and coldness. Because the conjunction of heat, dryness, and moisture has made it oily and combustible, it should be regarded as fuel for accidental fire rather than as Nature’s elemental fire. It is a kind of spurious generation, which has not deserved to be numbered among the elements or designated by that name. Aristotle therefore rightly calls such ignitions imperfect mixtures. The same judgment applies to the smoke of burnt things: because smoke is oily, it readily takes flame, which is nothing other than smoke set alight.

Fire feeds on what is oily; oiliness is its food. What is oily is airy moisture tempered with dryness. Hence sulphurous matter may often be observed to be dry externally and bounded by dryness, as ordinary sulphur, gunpowder, and similar things are. Although these appear dry outside, they conceal an oily moisture within and are resolved into it when fire is applied.

Those also fall into a careless error who, seeing stones and certain heavy bodies sometimes generated in the air and cast down from it amid flashes, thunderbolts, and bursting clouds, have persuaded themselves that fire turns to stone and changes into earth, or that earth is carried up there. The matter stands quite otherwise. That hardened matter was never fire or earth, nor did it emerge from a sphere of fire, if such a sphere exists, or from the body of earth. Rather, an oily and viscous moisture, as though muddy, is enclosed in a cloud as in a furnace. Like a work of pottery, it is so seared and baked by the heat of burning exhalations that it becomes stone. Hence the hurled darts of the thunderbolt have been seen. Such meteors are swellings, congestions—in short, diseases of Nature, not elements. In a similar but slower way, a stone is generated from phlegm in the kidneys or bladder, sometimes in the stomach. For the microcosm too has its own meteors.

Nature’s fire is very different from our artificial or accidental fire, and the two disagree greatly. Nature’s fire is twofold: universal, and particular or individual. The universal fire is diffused everywhere through all parts of the universe. It gently rouses and moves the inclinations and powers of heavenly bodies; it impregnates and cherishes this globe of ours, destined for the generation of things, with a seed productive of offspring; it pours powers into seeds, unfolds Nature’s folded powers, mixes the elements, gives form to matter, and finally opens Nature’s secret. Its fountain is in the sun, which, like the heart of the universe, pours life-giving heat into every region as though pouring out its love. The particular fire of Nature is implanted and innate in every mixed body and individual being. It flows like a little stream from the universal fire and performs by analogy in its own microcosm everything that its father, the sun, performs in the macrocosm. But who would not call our common fire—which opposes all generation, lives only on plunder, subsists on another’s ruin, destroys life, and destines everything for ashes—Nature’s enemy rather than her guest, destruction rather than life’s support? Fires generated in the airy region are due more to chance than to Nature’s design.

EARTH AND WATER ARE NOT CHANGED INTO ONE ANOTHER.

Nor do the bodies of earth and water, though neighbours in place, change into one another. Their proximity only causes them to mingle: water dilutes earth, and earth thickens water. Mud results, a body that is neither, but intermediate between the two. If heat resolves it, each nature is completely separated: water flies off and earth settles, without any mutual conversion. The single quality they share, coldness, cannot accomplish that conversion, since the opposition of dryness and moisture is no less powerful in resisting than their common agreement in coldness is in uniting. Moreover, earth’s dryness and fixation oppose water’s moisture and volatility. Thus only one quality favours alteration, while several oppose it and will prevail in resistance. Nature too will intervene: always ready to preserve herself, she never inclines towards destruction and transformation unless compelled or overcome.