One Day my Male (for I was taken for the Female) told me, That the true reason which had obliged him to travel all over the Earth, and at length to abandon it for the Moon, was that he could not find so much as one Country where even Imagination was at liberty. "Look ye," said he, "how the Wittiest thing you can say, unless you wear a Cornered Cap, if it thwart the Principles of the Doctors of the Robe, you are an Ideot, a Fool, and something worse perhaps. I was about to have been put into the Inquisition at home, for maintaining to the Pedants Teeth, That there was a _Vacuum_, and that I knew no one matter in the World more Ponderous than another." I asked him, what probable Arguments he had, to confirm so new an Opinion? "To evince that," answered he, "you must suppose that there is but one Element; for though we see Water, Earth, Air and Fire distinct, yet are they never found to be so perfectly pure but that there still remains some Mixture. For example, When you behold Fire, it is not Fire but Air much extended; the Air is but Water much dilated; Water is but liquified Earth, and the Earth it self but condensed Water; and thus if you weigh Matter seriously, you'll find it is but one, which like an excellent Comedian here below acts all Parts, in all sorts of Dresses: Otherwise we must admit as many Elements as there are kinds of Bodies: And if you ask me why Fire burns, and Water cools, since it is but one and the same matter, I answer, That that matter acts by Sympathy, according to the Disposition it is in at the time when it acts. Fire, which is nothing but Earth also, more dilated than is fit for the constitution of Air, strives to change into it self, by Sympathy, what ever it meets with: Thus the heat of Coals, being the most subtile Fire, and most proper to penetrate a Body, at first slides through the pores of our Skin; and because it is a new matter that fills us, it makes us exhale in Sweat; that Sweat dilated by the Fire is converted to a Steam, and becomes Air; that Air being farther ratified by the heat of the _Antiperistasis_, or of the Neighbouring Stars, is called Fire, and the Earth abandoned by the Cold and Humidity which were Ligaments to the whole, falls to the ground: Water, on the other hand, though it no ways differ from the matter of Fire, but in that it is closer, burns us not; because that being dense by Sympathy, it closes up the Bodies it meets with, and the Cold we feel is no more but the effect of our Flesh contracting it self, because of the Vicinity of Earth or Water, which constrains it to a Resemblance. Hence it is, that those who are troubled with a Dropsie convert all their nourishment into Water; and the Cholerick convert all the Blood that is formed in their Liver into Choler.