Theater of Insects

—they are ground as if in a mill, and are excreted as quickly as possible; hunger never ceasing until, with Divine Nemesis commanding, the vile herd consumes regions entirely, which were exposed to the vengeance of the thundering wrath, and reduces to nothing the peoples who ridiculously threaten the sky with destruction. You will see the points arming the mouths of spiders, the tiny wounds of which allow an insolent poison to enter, going into the center of the body, fixed biting deep into the marrow, persisting as long as the life of the atrocious beast that received it, raging periodically at certain hours, disturbing the Phantasy, which is soothed by objects of the same color as the animal, but does not cease to rage until dancing provoked by music causes profuse sweats and dissolves the paroxysm, only to recur the next day at the same hour. You will behold the internal fire of the Lampyrides glow-worms fixed to the tail, and the torches of the Cocuiæ tropical fire-beetles, the night-lights of the Indies, conquering the Cimmerian darkness. And so (if you take lenses made of crystal a little—however necessary they may be for lynx-eyed people in examining atoms), you will marvel at the darkly reddish attire of the armored fleas, with a back bristling with bristles, and hairy legs, and between the two antennae a prominent butcher-like tube, the bitter plague of girls, most inimical to human rest, especially in sleep. You will see the prominent eyes of lice, and their horns, the notched circumference of the body, the entire substance transparent, through which the movement of the heart and blood fluctuates ceaselessly as if in the Euripus. The flat little bodies of the petulant, crab-shaped lice will be revealed to you, with the grappling hooks by which, constantly lacerating the human skin between the hairs with their mouths, they adhere more tenaciously than limpets attached to rocks. Indeed, the very Acari mites, indivisible due to their extreme smallness, extracted by a needle from the tunnels they dug in the skin near a lake of water and placed upon a fingernail, will reveal to the sun their red head and the feet with which they walk. But if you recall your mind from the analogia analogy/proportion of the parts to the generation and origin of insects, and weigh the various transmutations they undergo, such as worms into flies, caterpillars (each species of which takes its origin from the corruption of individual vegetables) into chrysalises—shining as if covered with golden plates—and butterflies, whose eggs again produce worm-like offspring, through a circle acting successively and nature constantly returning to itself in perpetual motion, you will undoubtedly enter a very ample field of philosophizing, regarding the universal spirit equally wandering through, filling, governing, and introducing various forms into the Entities belonging to each, according to the disposition of matter, the power and activity of the three kingdoms (vegetable, animal, mineral). Nor will the commerce of all sublunary bodies among themselves fail to exercise your speculation; for although they often seem to fight with opposite fronts, they nevertheless convene in one, and all and each borrow something from one another. Indeed, if both animals and plants are transmuted, why is the same denied to metals? This is what very many genuine ministers of nature and legitimate helpers boast, not without reason, that they can accomplish by art; and this [is done] solely through the removal of impediments and the appropriate co-application of the active and the passive, upon which having been done, the philosopher leaves the business to Nature alone, which, aided by gentle external heat without haste, stirs the internal fire, [which is] the maker [destined] to procure the health and wealth of the Elixir; so that I may banish the donkeys who, exulting in lions' skins, prepare a tumultuous and confused equipment of workshops, dig up everything subterranean from the lowest mines, and expose them to the husband of Venus, greedy to test dreams,