Water is the heaviest Element, full of unctuous flegme, and it is an Element more worthy in its quality then the Earth, without, volatile, but within fixed, it is cold, and moist, and tempered with the aire: it is the sperm of the world, in which the seed of all things is kept: it is the keeper of the seed of every thing. Yet wee must know, that the Seed is one thing, and the Sperme another: the Earth is the receptacle of the Sperme, but Water is the receptacle of the Seed. Whatsoever the Aire doth distill into the Water, by means of the fire, the same doth the water convey to the Earth. Sometimes the sperme lackes sufficiency of seed, for want of heat which should digest it; for there is alwayes plenty of Sperm, expecting Seed, which by the imagination of fire through the motion of the Aire it carryes into its matrix: and sometimes there being lack of Seed, the Sperme enters, but it goeth forth againe without fruit: but of this more at large hereafter in the third Treatise of Principles, _viz._ in that of Salt. It happens sometimes in Nature, that the Sperme enters into the matrix with a sufficiency of Seed; but the matrix being indisposed, by reason of being filled with offensive, sulphureous, & flegmatick vapors, doth not conceive, neither doth that come to passe that should. Also nothing is properly in this Element, but only as it is wont to bee in the Sperm. It is delighted chiefly in its own motion, which is made by the Aire, and it is apt to mixe with things by reason of its superficiall, volatile body. It is, as wee said before, the receptacle of all manner of Seed: in it the Earth is easily purified, and resolved; and the Aire is congealed in it, and is joined with it radically. It is the menstruum of the world, which penetrating the Aire, by means of heat, drawes along with it selfe a warm vapour, which causeth a naturall generation of those things, which the Earth, as a matrix is impregnated withall, and when the matrix receives a due proportion of Seed, of what kind soever, it proceeds, and Nature workes without intermission to the end; but the remaining moisture, or Sperme falls to the side, and by vertue of the heat in the Earth is putrefied (that which is cast to the side) and of that afterwards are generated other things, as small vermine, and wormes. The Artificer of a quicke wit may indeed see in this Element, as it were out of Sperme, divers wonders of Nature; but it will be needfull to take that Sperm, in which the Astrall Seed in a certaine proportion is already imagined, or conceived; because Nature makes, and produceth pure things by the first putrefaction, but by the second farre more pure, worthy, and noble; as thou hast an example in wood, which is vegetable, where in the first composition Nature maketh wood, but when that is after maturity corrupted, it is putrefied, and of it worms are bred, and such kind of vermine as they are, which have both life, and sight: for it is manifest, that a sensible thing is