The Summary of Physics Restored

141The last wheel or action of Nature’s circle is decoction: nothing other than the digestion, maturation, and conversion into nourishment of raw moisture instilled into earth’s bosom. This seems to be the goal and end of the others, because it is the relaxation of labour and the reception of food obtained through preceding labours. For, almost motionless and seized by sleep, she crushes, cooks, and digests the raw moisture she has received through the power of inward heat, setting secret fire—Nature’s proper instrument—in motion in profound silence and rest, so that it may convert that raw liquor, tempered with dryness, into nourishment. This is Nature’s whole circle, which she turns through different degrees of labour and heat.