The Summary of Physics Restored

21Reason required the dark abyss, or the world's immediate matter, to be watery or moist, so that it could be made fine more readily and, through that refinement and the flow of matter, the entire mass of the heavens and the whole fabric could be spread out and extended into a continuous body. Flowing is proper to moisture, and the continuity of every body is owed to moisture alone, for moisture is the glue and solder of elements and bodies. Fire, acting on moisture, rarefies it by heating it. Heat is fire's instrument, through which it performs two opposite effects in one and the same labour: as it separates moist nature from earthy nature, by rarefying the former it condenses the latter. Thus the separation of unlike things brings about the gathering of like things. By this primordial chemical art the uncreated spirit, the world's craftsman, distinguished the confused natures of things.