ON THE ELEMENTS.

DE ELEMENTIS.

...earth in water. This completes the list of how elements "live" in one another from the previous page. Fire thoroughly purifies the air, air the water, and water the earth: each one assimilates makes similar to itself the other to itself and to its own brilliance. Do you not see in the summertime how water is drawn by the sun into the air, and through the air becomes clearer and more subtle meaning refined, less dense, or vaporous: so that between the water and the air, either a tiny difference or none at all is perceived?

An example is water exposed to the rays of the Sun, which gradually vanishes as it is drawn by the Sun and rendered more subtle; provided that cold does not compress it. For the heat of fire, just as it makes all things subtle and pure, so on the contrary, cold—the opposite of fire—condenses and constricts all things, and as it were compresses the water, resisting the heat of fire and the subtleness of air.

This is the reason why water, having thickened original: "concreta," meaning hardened or condensed into a solid-like state again into drops, falls back down; these drops, absorbed by the earth, become the nourishment of things born from the elements; and thus they penetrate all the way to the root of the seed: but, by the virtue and efficacy original: "virtute & efficacia" of the Sun, emerging once more to the outermost parts of the plants, they deposit original: "destituunt," here meaning to set down or leave behind as they circulate the spirits or the nourishment of the earth, which by the heat of the same Sun are transmu- The text cuts off here; the catchword "tari" indicates the word is "transmutari," meaning "to be transmuted" or "to be changed."