The Second Part of the Mineral Work

and rebounds from the Center to the surface. Just as is visible in a mirror: when solar rays strike it, and they cannot penetrate the compact and polished metal, they are driven backwards in a scattered manner. And wherever those fiery rays, while rebounding, seize upon a fatty humidity in the porosity of the Earth, they stick, and by mutual mixture, they are coagulated into a certain palpable essence, from which, according to the nature of a pure or impure place, a pure or impure metal is born over the approaching passage of time. For the metal does not become mature at the same moment, but the seed of the metal, with the heat of the central fire, is gradually nourished and increased in the matrix of the earth until it attains its perfection, as happens in the generation of Vegetables and Animals, whose seed, once received by a suitable matrix, takes its increase gradually from it, until, unhindered by obstacles, it attains its predetermined and perfect form. Whence, according to the purity of the place, metals also vary. For there is only one seed from which metals and minerals sprout, but the place and other accidents are the cause of their dissimilarity, as we shall prove in the following.

But it will perhaps seem prodigious to some that I say there is a place in the middle of the Earth which nothing can pass through or penetrate, but is stopped; the heavy remains, while the light is carried backwards. It will be worth the effort to clarify this opinion in a few words. In the creation of the world, when the Elements were not yet separated from one another, but were existing as chaos, when God