Water produces elementary earth, or pure quartz; but this elementary earth does not enter into the composition of organic bodies. Van Helmont excludes _fire_ from the number of elements, because it is not a substance, nor even the essential form of a substance. The matter of fire is compound, and differs entirely from the matter of light. Water gives origin also to the three chemical principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury, which cannot be considered as elements or active principles. I do not see clearly how he gets rid of _air_; for he says, that though water may be elevated in the form of vapour, yet that these vapours are no more air than the dust of marble is water. According to Van Helmont, a particular disposition of matter, or a particular mixture of that matter is not necessary for the formation of a body. The archeus, by its sole power, draws all bodies from water, when the _ferment_ exists. This _ferment_, in its quality of a mean which determines the action of the archeus, is not a formal being; it can neither be called a _substance_, nor an _accident_. It pre-exists in the seed which is developed by it, and which contains in itself a second ferment of the seed, the product of the first. The ferment exhales an odour, which attracts the generating spirit of the archeus. This spirit consists in an _aura vitalis_, and it creates the bodies of nature in its own image, after its own _idea_. It is the true foundation of life, and of all the functions of organized bodies; it disappears only at the instant of death to produce a new creation of the body, which enters then, for the second time, into fermentation. The seed, then, is not indispensable to enable an animal to propagate its species; it is merely necessary that the archeus should act upon a suitable ferment. Animals produced in this manner are as perfect as those which spring from eggs. When water, as an element, ferments, it develops a vapour, to which Van Helmont gave the name of _gas_, and which he endeavours to distinguish from _air_. This gas contains the chemical principles of the body from which it escapes in an aerial form by the impulse of the archeus. It is a substance intermediate between spirit and matter, the principle of action of life, and of generation of all bodies; for its production is the first result of the action of the vital spirit on the torpid ferment, and it may be compared to the _chaos_ of the ancients.