It belongs properly to spiritual nature to act, and to bodily nature to undergo action. Where the two meet, as in mixed bodies, the former, being nobler, acts and rules, while the latter obeys by undergoing action. For the power to act is the badge of dominion, and the burden of undergoing action the mark of servitude. Thus the fire implanted in the seed is the principle of generation and life, Nature’s Archeus and steward in preparing and shaping matter and in mixing and distributing the elements. Thus form exercises its powers with authority within the mixed body as the source of all its actions. Thus the powers of heavenly things dispose and seal the lower elements and bodily matter.

QUALITIES ARE INSTRUMENTS, NOT CAUSES, OF ACTIONS

Natural bodies possessing an active power and a hidden cause of action do not act through qualities alone, as is commonly supposed, but through hidden spirits. Fire does not heat or burn through the simple quality of heat, but through a continuous flow of spirits and rays. Neither earth nor water cools or moistens through the qualities of coldness and moisture alone: through fine vapours and inborn, emitted spirits they strike the senses even from a distance. Poisons likewise bring wasting and death, sooner or later, not merely through hot or cold qualities but through harmful spirits. The same judgement may be made about plants and herbs, because their active powers lie hidden not in their qualities but in their essence. Nature, whose foundation and powers chiefly concern spiritual things, has made this essence rich in spirits. Bodies are like shadows or garments of things, beneath which invisible Nature is concealed. Qualities, being accidents of things, cannot constitute their essence or unfold their wonderful powers in action. They are merely instruments of actions and affections implanted in matter, which the working spirits, or artificers of actions, also use when acting. Nature does not permit qualities to be the principles and efficient causes of actions.

The natural tinctures, smells and tastes of things are particular and spiritual gifts with which Nature has fittingly enriched her works. They contribute more than ornament and do not adhere to things merely as external accidents. They have an implanted, radical cause and should be called not so much accidents as revealing signs of inward powers, through which the hidden and formal signatures of things disclose themselves.

RAREFACTION AND CONDENSATION ARE NATURE’S INSTRUMENTS.

Rarefaction and condensation are two instruments of Nature by which bodies are changed into spirits and spirits back into bodies, or bodily elements into spiritual ones and spiritual ones again into bodily ones. For the elements undergo these alternations in mixed bodies. Thus Earth supplies spiritual food from her bosom to the roots of plants. Once consumed, it passes into stem, bark, branches, leaves and flowers—in a word, into bodily substance. Nature does the same in animals. The food and drink they consume, at least their better portion, are brought into humours and finally spirits. Entering through the pores and adhering to flesh, sinews, bones and the other bodily parts, these nourish and enlarge them, restoring declining nature through the tireless work of replacement. Thus a portion of spiritual and purer substance thickens and coagulates into the foamy body of seed. Art, Nature’s imitator, experiences something similar in its dissolutions and compositions.

RADICAL MOISTURE.

The life of individuals consists in a proportionate and close union of matter and form. The knot, bond and foundation of the two natures lie hidden in the strong embrace of heat or innate fire and radical moisture. That formal fire is a heavenly ray united to radical moisture. The latter is the purest and most thoroughly digested portion of matter, like an oil most fully clarified and enriched through Nature’s organs as through alembics, and in a certain way converted into a spiritual nature.

The seeds of things contain much radical moisture, in which a spark of heavenly fire is held as in its own food. In a suitable womb this spark performs everything necessary for generation. Where there is a constant principle of heat, fire is believed to be present beneath it, because fire is the true principle of heat in the thing in which it exists.

RADICAL MOISTURE IS IMMORTAL.

We may observe something immortal in radical moisture. It neither vanishes at death nor is consumed by any force of the fiercest fire, but remains unconquered in dead bodies and in the ashes of things that have been burned.

TWOFOLD MOISTURE IN MIXED BODIES.