We may suppose the entire terrestrial globe to possess a nature no less constant than heaven, the moon, and the stars. If it is the world’s centre, as is believed, its constancy is no less necessary than that of the universe’s other bodies. Indeed, earth is now the same, without any essential transformation, as it was at the beginning and will be until the end of the ages. If it has suffered some universal damage through a flood, or particular accidental damage through a chasm or the onrush of sea or rivers, this has happened because the supreme ruler changed at will the laws of his whole empire or its provinces, or because of discord in the world’s harmony and disease in afflicted Nature, rather than through earth’s own inclination or fault. All bodies of the universe suffer their labours and diseases, although in different ways according to their diverse natures and degrees of perfection. Yet accidents do not alter their nature and constancy considered as a whole. Absolute constancy and freedom from suffering belong only to the eternal God; but heaven, water, earth, and the other bodies of the universe will persist in their essence until the appointed term of their age.

WATER AND AIR ARE NOT CHANGED INTO ONE ANOTHER.

If any of those four natures inclines towards mutual conversion, the inclination is much stronger in the intermediate pair. Water and air are bound by a greater affinity with each other than with the others, or than the others have with one another. They appear to differ less in qualities than in the intensity and relaxation of qualities, and less in nature than in accidents. For water claims coldness and moisture by Nature’s right and communicates both to the lower region of air through their intercourse. Air possesses scarcely any quality of its own except extreme tenuity, but is capable of being imbued with the rest. For that reason it is of a heavenly nature, which, being in itself most temperate and committed to no particular quality, readily receives and communicates others’ dispositions, influences, and powers—namely those of the heavenly bodies. Density and rarity, which border upon one another when relaxed, seem to establish the chief difference between water and our air. Hence in sacred Genesis we read that God separated waters from waters, as though a division of one nature according to place had occurred, rather than a change according to essence.

Yet those two neighbouring natures do not undergo a true and essential interchange. They change only in a certain respect, not wholly but in a qualified way, and that exchange occurs only in the lowest region of air, bounded by the vault of the clouds. It does not reach the middle region, much less the upper one. Water, becoming vapour through rarefaction, flies up and is raised into air rather than converted into it; that vapour, condensed and resolved into water, falls back. Antiquity called this circulation and return into itself of a single nature the conversion of two, guided more by the deception of sense than by the light of understanding. To one searching all Nature’s secrets with lynx-like eyes, things are found to stand otherwise. Whoever simply calls even the thinnest vapour air is also mistaken, for vapour is a certain intermediate and imperfect body between the twofold waters, upper and lower—our water and air—yet is neither. However much it is rarefied, it will never be exalted to the lofty rank of airy nobility: it will become spurious air, not natural and legitimate air. Nor will the clear nature of air sink so low and depart so far from its purity as to thicken into vapour, cloud, or water. Nature has received no right to erase or displace through a new confusion that primeval separation of the waters, which the Architectonic Spirit made truly and actually, or the established boundaries of the world’s parts, which the Lord marked with his indelible seal.

WATER ALONE CIRCULATES.

Those who penetrate the matter through a deeper investigation will acknowledge earth as this world’s womb, the vessel of generation, the mother of a manifold and almost innumerable offspring. At the beginning of creation, freed from the dominion of waters floating above her and made her own mistress, she remained arid and dry. Her body grew denser and took its place at the work’s centre as its foundation, providing an open field for plants and animals. Yet to become fit for generation in such abundance, she needed moisture. Divine wisdom provided for this need: water was made volatile from the beginning so that it might be raised into vapours, which, condensed into a cloud by cold, would again be dissolved into water by warmth. Through this artifice of the divine mind, earth’s fertility was provided for; dryness, which threatened barrenness, was tempered with abundant moisture, and the mother’s womb made fertile. Water alone, therefore, circulates to irrigate earth’s bosom—or, more precisely, is distilled in the lower region of air as in an alembic. Enriched through cohobations and repeated distillations, it acquires the powers of higher and lower things; imbued with heavenly nectar, it more effectively softens earth’s bosom and impregnates it with a power productive of offspring. The supreme maker of things, who uses Nature as his art, added nothing superfluous to his work and left nothing wanting.

Since water is the world’s menstruum, it contains and cherishes the seeds and elements of things. While it circulates, the true elements of Nature also revolve: they are present in earth as in a matrix and vessel of generation, and in water as in a menstruum. Thus the elements of earth, water, and air are present in vapour and are sublimed and enriched with it. These are not the bodies of earth, water, and air, which have their own spheres and constitute the world’s regions, but Nature’s spiritual elements themselves, which dwell concealed within those bodies. From them, stones and other bodies can be generated in the air through the cooking action of fire. For wherever all the elements meet, excellently mixed as they are in vapour, bodies can be generated. Yet when such generation occurs outside a suitable matrix, as in the air, imperfect mixed bodies are produced, less through a defect of mixture than through a defect of matrix.

Water, occupying an intermediate nature and station between earth and air, disturbs both through its mobility and inconstancy. It pollutes air with black soot and noxious vapours and often submerges earth in floods. It brings whirlwinds to air, ruin to earth, and corruption to both. Through lightness it invades the lodging above, through heaviness the dwelling below, as an enemy. By its abundance or scarcity it overturns the seasons and Nature’s order. Imperious, it moves and shakes every neighbouring region on either side with crashing and tumult. Since its whole nature is female, the supreme creator seems to have given it to the world as a woman and a necessary evil. Thus it arrogates everything to itself as its dominion and often turns to destruction the powers granted it for Nature’s benefit. Finally, it is the scourge of divine justice, an avenging Nemesis, appointed to punish the crimes of humankind. It rushes in to inflict punishment and, clothed in various forms, makes hope and wealth—the roots of pride—the sport of heaven.

The grosser the universal natures are, the more impure they are; the finer, the purer. Because earth is denser than water, it is less noble; so too is water less noble than air, and air than heaven. Of heaven’s regions, the higher, being subtler, must certainly be regarded as nobler. For it is an undoubted truth that spiritual natures are far superior to corporeal ones, and that those nearer to spiritual natures are nearer perfection.

The foundation of generation and corruption lies in moisture. In both of Nature’s labours, moisture is the first of the elements to undergo action and the first to receive form’s seal. Natural spirits readily unite with it because they flow from it, and readily return into it because it is their root. In it and through it the other elements are mixed. The moist element circulates no less in mixed bodies and individuals than in the world, in the work of nutrition as well as generation. For Nature has chosen that both works be performed through the same instruments of rarefaction and condensation, and through the same intermediaries, namely spirits.

* Book 1, On Regimen.

Earth is the vessel of generation; water is Nature’s menstruum, embracing within itself seminal and also formal powers, which it borrows from the sun as the male and the formal and universal principle. From the sun, Nature’s fire and formal spirits flow into the seeds of things. These contain everything necessary for generation, innate heat lying hidden in moisture. Hippocrates * excellently affirmed that these two elements, fire and water, can do all things and contain all things. For from the first flow the two male qualities, heat and dryness, and from the second the two female qualities, cold and moisture; these meet and mingle in the generation of mixed bodies. The two greater luminaries preside over these two as the chief elements: the sun, author of Nature’s fire, and the moon, mistress of moistures.