The Summary of Physics Restored

174The matter of metals, being watery and earthly and the most closely compacted of all through the excellent and extremely subtle mixing of the heavy elements, is insensible, exceedingly weighty and incapable of any movement of its own. Yet within earthen or stony wombs, as though in alembics, Nature’s wonderful art sublimes and purifies it. Through repeated distillations its mixing is so perfected in an exceedingly fine vapour that, because of its immense subtlety and enrichment, the resources of the Sun and heavenly bodies enter and mingle with it, especially in the generation of perfect metals. For this reason, although metals have drawn their bodies from water and earth, Nature works so skilfully as a potter in shaping the bodies of metals, especially the perfect ones, that she presents them to the heavenly powers as worthy of the most excellent form, to be informed by them. This is a work of very long labour, yet finished and cultivated to the utmost of Nature’s powers. In it Heaven and Earth seem to unite rather than merely agree. The formative spirits of metals, however, are confined as though in a prison within an exceedingly hard rind and remain motionless until the philosophers’ fire frees them from their bonds. Then, through their heavenly seed in their own matter, they bring forth a worthy son of the Sun and at last a fifth essence of wonderful power, with Heaven dwelling among us as a stranger.