Aristotle and air’s conversion to earth

Meaning

Aristotle is invoked as agreeing that moist things arise from air and earthly things from moisture. Nuysement applies the saying to the earth’s being moistened on every side and to native heat thickening that moisture into a kind of earth containing duly proportioned mercury and sulphur. The citation thus supports a transition from a receiving medium to an embodied generative subject. It follows a larger account in which air carries celestial influences and retains forms like a mirror. The source names Aristotle, but supplies no work or passage by which to authenticate the attribution; the sequence remains this author’s deployment of an authority, not a modern account of air becoming soil.