The Summary of Physics Restored

198When a candle is consumed or blown out by a strong wind, the fiery and luminous spirit that kindles its wick and smoke does not perish or become extinguished, as people commonly suppose. Deprived of its food or torn away from it, it is dispersed into the air and vanishes. Air is the abyss and universal receptacle of lights and spiritual natures in the material World. This teaches us that radiance has a spiritual nature and flows from a spiritual source, just as natural forms flow from their womb, which is the spirit of the Universe flowing constantly from the Sun as from its immortal source. Just as the bodies of mixed things, when coming into being, flow from first matter and the elements, and when perishing gradually fall back into those same principles, so the natural forms of individuals flow, as they arrive, from universal form. This, as the form of forms, breathes formative power into seeds; as they depart, they flow back into it. That form is the spirit of the Universe’s light, to which all solitary forms and sparks of light released from bodily bonds likewise return as to their own principle and a nature of the same kind. Thus all mixed bodies are resolved into their principles, while those principles return to the perennial source of their nature as to their own centre or homeland.