Selected quad for the lemma: water_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
water_n	air_n	earth_n	hot_a	3,655	5	8.1377	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35532	Selēnarhia, or, The government of the world in the moon a comical history / written by that famous wit and caveleer of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac ; and done into English by Tho. St Serf, Gent.; Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune. English	Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619-1655.; St. Serfe, Thomas, Sir, fl. 1668.	1659 (1659)	Wing C7719; ESTC R18714	59,111	189

if there were no vacuum there would be no motion or we must admit penetration of bodies for it would be ridiculous to think that when a fly beats back with her wings a parcel of Air and that parcel another and that other another and so by the stirring of a flea's little toe there rises a bumb behinde the World But when they can say no more they fly to rarefaction But in good faith How comes it that when a body scarifies it self that one particle can be separated from another without leaving an empty place Must not these two bodies that were just now separated have been at the same time in the same place of this and that in this sort they must be all three penetrated I expect you 'l ask me Why through a hollow trunk a seringe or a pump they force the water up against its inclination To which I answer you It is by violence but it is not the fear of a Vacuum that diverts it from its way but being joyned to the Air by an invisible conjuncture it is elevated with the Air which holds it imbraced This is not very difficult to comprehend when one knows the perfect Circle and delicate contexture of the Elements for if you attentively consider the slime which marries the Earth to the Water you will finde that it is no more Earth nor Water but the interposers betwixt these two Enemies the water and the Air reciprocally form a Mist which penetrates the one and the others humors to conclude a Peace and the Air is reconciled to the Fire by an Exhalation their Mediator I beleeve he would have pursued his Discourse but that our commons were brought and my body being very hungry closed my ears to his Discourse and opened my mouth and stomack to the welcome meat I remember another time as we were Philosophying for neither the one nor the other delighted to discourse of mean things I am very sorry says he to finde a wit of your temper infected with vulgar errors you must know in spite of Aristotles Pedantism of whom all your Schools in France ring that all is in all that is for example that in Water there is Fire and in Fire there is Water in Air Earth and in Earth Air and though this opinion make your Scholars open their eyes as big as sawcers yet it is easier to prove then to perswade them to it For I will first ask them if Water will not ingender fish which if they deny digg a pit and fill it with water which if they please they may strain to avoid all blinde Objections and if in some time you finde not fish there I will be bound to swallow all the water you have put in 't But if any be found as I do not doubt but there will it is a convincing reason that there is both fire and salt Now to finde Water in Fire as I take it is no hard enterprize for let them pick out Fire that is most separated from the matter if they please as Comets in which there is a great deal since that unctious matter of which they are engendered converted to Sulphur by the Antiperistass that light them if it should finde no obstacle in its violence in the humid cold which tempers and opposeth it it would briskly consume it self like Lightning Now that there is Air in the Earth they will not deny or else they never heard of the horrible Earth-quakes wherewith the mountains of Sicily are agitated And besides that we see the Earth all vary to the very grains of sand that compose it and yet none says those pores contain a Vacuum I hope then they will not be angry that I say Air lodgeth there Now I must prove that in Air there is Earth but I will scarce take the pains since you are convinced as often as those legions of Atoms fall upon your head which are so numerous that they choak Arithmetique But let us pass from Simples to Compositions which more frequently furnish me with subjects that all is in all not that they change into one another as your Peripateticks tattle for I will maintain to their beards that the Principles do mingle and separate and mingle again in such sort that what was made Water by the Wise Creator of the World will ever be so I will not as they doe suppose a Maxime without proving it Wherefore take a Log or any other combustible matter set fire to it they will say when it is throughly lighted that what was wood is now become fire But I will maintain the contrary and that there is no more fire in 't when it is inflamed then when it was first lighted for what before the cold and humid part hid and hindred to agitate succoured by the stranger that hath rallied his forces against the flegmatick humor which choakt it and now possesses the field his Enemy before was master of which he demonstrates without obstacle triumphing over his Jaylor Doe you not see how the water flies out at the two ends of the logg yet hot and smoaking from the Combat The flame you see ascend is the subtillest of the Fire the most separated from the matter and that which is consequently the most ready to return to its self yet it unites it self Pyramidically to a certain height the better to pierce the thick humidity of the Air which resists it but as in mounting it begins more and more to be separated from the violent company of its Landlords it then begins to fly at large meeting no more Antipathy to its passage but this negligence is often subject to a second imprisonment for voyaging separately it sometime rangeth into a Cloud where if the juncture be of quantities enough to head a vapour they joyn they grumble and from thence they thunder they lighten and the death of innocents is often the implacable effect of the irritated Choler of dead things If when it findes it self intangled in the crudity of the middle Region and being not strong enough to dispute its liberty or to defend it self it straight abandons it self to the discretion of its enemy which constrains it by its weight to fall again to the Earth and this unfortunate ranger being inclosed in a drop of Water will be faln at the foot of an Oak whose Animal fire will invite this poor stragler to lodge with him and thus he returns to the same Prison he had so lately broke But let us examine the Fortune of the other Elements which compose this Logg the Air retires to its quarter yet mingled with vapours because the conquering fire in great Choler did briskly expel them pell-mell together Now you see it the Winds Tennis-ball serve Beasts for breathing fills up the empty places Nature fram'd and may be after all this being condens'd into a drop of Dew it may be drunk by the thirsty leaves of the same tree where our fire was retired before the Water which the furious flames

might have some body to entertain me in the time of my brutification One day my Male for they lookt upon me as the Female did relate to me the reason of his travels about all the Earth and what at last obliged him to quit it for the Moon which was that he had not found one Country where the imagination it self was free for look you sayes he if you have not a Corner'd Cap whatsoever you say though never so witty yet it is against the Doctors opinion and you are an Ideot a Fool and something worse they would have put me in my Countrey in the Inquisition because I maintained to all the Pedants teeth that there was a Vacuum and that I knew no matter in the World heavier then another I askt him upon what foundation he built so little received an opinion Oh says he to compass it you must suppose there is but one Element for though we separately see Water Earth Air and Fire yet we never find them so perfectly pure but that they are interchangeably ingaged one with another as for example When you see the Fire it is not Fire but Air mightily extended Air is but Water much dilated Water is but Earth dissolved and Earth it self is but condens'd water and thus seriously to penetrate the matter you will finde it is but one vvho like an excellent Comoedian plays all several parts under all diversity of habits otherwise we must admit as many Elements as there be sorts of Bodies And if you will ask me Why the Fire burns and the Water cools being it is the self-same matter I answer you That this matter agitates sympathetically according to the disposition it is then in Fire that is nothing but Earth more dilated then when it is to constitute air indeavors to convert to it self by sympathy what it meets with so the heat of a coal being the subtillest fittest to penetrate a body slides through the pores of our bulk and in the first place because it is a new matter that fills us it causes a breathing sweat vvhich sweat disperst by the fire converts it self into fume and becoms Air this Air being moreover melted by the heat of the Antiperistass or adjoyning Stars is called Fire and the Earth abandoned by the cold and humidity which vvere ligaments to the whole fall to Earth Water on the other side though it differs not from the matter of Fire but in being more closed it doth not burn us because that we being closed it sympathetically closes the body it meets with the cold that vve feel is nothing but our flesh rallying in a less compass drawing with it part of the neighbor water of Earth from vvhence it proceeds that those that are sick of a dropsie convert all their nourishment into vvater Cholerick men change the blood their Liver creates into Choler suppose then that there is but one Element and it is most certain that all our bodies each according to its quality equally incline to the Centre of the Earth But you will ask me Why that Iron and other Metals Earth and Wood have a swifter descent towards the Centre then a sponge but that it is fuller of Air which naturally tends upwards but that is not at all the reason and thus I answer you Though a Rock fall with more rapidity then a feather yet the one and the other have the same inclination for that voyage as for example a Cannon-bullet if the Earth were pierc'd quite through would precipitate more furiously towards its Centre then a bladder fill'd with Air and the reason is that that mass of the Metal is a great deal of Earth crowded into a little compass and that Winde a little Earth in a large compass for all the parts of the matter which are lodged in the Iron being joyned one with another augment their forces by that Union because being thus closed they are a great many fighting against a few since that parcel of Air equal to the Bullet in bigness is not equal in quantity Without proving this by a multitude of arguments in good faith How do you beleeve that a Pike a Sword or a Dagger wounds us if it be not because the steel is a matter where the parts are closer together and more within one another then our flesh whose poriness and softness demonstrates that it contains a very little matter spread into a large compass and the point of the sword being an innumerable quantity of parts against a little flesh forces it to yeeld to the strongest as a well-knit squadron will easily break a scattered Batallion for why should a bar of red hot iron cast a greater heat then a log of the same bigness throughly lighted but because that more parts are lighted or burn in a little space then in the wood which because it is spongeous includes a great deal of emptiness or Vacuum within it and a Vacuum being nothing else but a privation of being cannot be susceptible of Fire But may be you 'l object to me that I suppose a Vacuum as if I had proved it and that it is that we dispute of Well then I will now prove it to you and though that difficulty be the labour of the Gordion-knot yet my arm is strong enough to become its Alexander Then let that vulgar beast who would not beleeve man to be man but that it 's told so answer me Suppose that there is but one matter as I think I have sufficiently proved How comes it that according to its appetite or disposition it restrains or swells How comes it that a piece of Earth by condensity becomes a stone Is it that the parts of that pebble are retired one into another in such sort that where one grain of sand is lodged in the same point or place another can be intruded all this cannot be nay according to their own principle since bodies cannot penetrate one another But this matter is got closer together or if you please grown less in filling some place that was empty before To say that it is incomprehensible there should be a Nothing in the World that we in part are composed of Nothing pray why not Is not the whole World incompass'd with Nothing since you 'l grant that Article confess that it is as easie for the World to have Nothing in it as about it I foresee you 'l ask me why that water being restrained by frost in another vessel should crack it if it be not to hinder a Vacuum But my answer to it is that the Air above it which tends as well as Earth or water to the Centre if it finde in its journey an empty place presently lodgeth it self if it findes the pores of this vessel that is the ways to this chamber of Vacuum too strait too long and too crooked it by breaking it satisfies its impatience to arrive at its Inn. But without troubling my self to answer all their Objections I dare boldly say that