T he Aire is an entire Element, most worthy of the three in its quality, without, light, and invisible, but within, heavy, visible, and fixed, it is hot, and moist, and tempered with Fire, and more worthy then Earth, & Water. It is volatil, but may be fixed; and when it is fixed, it makes every body penetrable. Of its most pure substance the vitall spirits of living Creatures are made; that which is lesse pure is taken up into its proper sphere of the Aire; but the residue, viz. the grosser part abides in the Water, and is circulated with the Water, as Fire with Earth, because they are friendly the one to the other. It is most worthy, as wee have said; and it is the true place of the Seed of all things: in it Seed is imagined, as in man, which afterward by the circulating motion is cast into its own Sperm. This Element[Pg 96] hath the form of entirenesse to distribute the Seed into Matrixes by the Sperm, and Menstruum of the world. In it also is the vitall spirit of every Creature, living in all things, penetrating, and constringing the seed in other Elements, as Males doe in Females. It nourisheth them, makes them conceive, and preserveth them; and this daily experience teacheth, that in this Element not only Mineralls, Animalls, or Vegetables live but also other Elements. For wee see that all Waters become putrefied, and filthy if they have not fresh Aire: The Fire also is extinguished, if the Aire be taken from it: (Thence Chymists come to know how to dispose of their Fire into severall degrees by means of the Aire, and to order their registers according to the measure of the Air:) The pores also of the Earth are preserved by Aire: In briefe, the whole structure of the world is preserved by Aire. Also in Animalls, Man dies if you take Aire from him, &c. Nothing would grow in the world, if there were not a power of the Aire, penetrating, and altering, bringing with it selfe nutriment that multiplies. In this Element by vertue of the Fire is that imagined Seed, which constringeth the Menstruum of the world by its occult power, as in trees, and herbs, when through the pores of the Earth, by the acting of the spirituall heat, there goeth forth a Sperm with the Seed, and the vertue of the Aire in a proportion constringeth, and congeals it by drops; and so trees by growing day after day, drop after drop, are at length raised to be great trees; as wee have treated in the book of the Twelve Treatises. In this Element are all things entire through the imagination of Fire; and it is full of div............