Selected quad for the lemma: water_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
water_n	body_n	earth_n	element_n	7,308	5	10.1853	5	true

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

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

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

had extirpated from that Throne elevated by the heat to the nursery of Meteors will fall in rain upon our Oak as soon as on another and the Earth which was burnt to ashes now cured of its sterility either by the nourishing heat of scattered dung or by the vegetative salt of some neighbouring Plants or by the foecundious water of some River this also may be neer this Oak which by the heat of its germ will attract it and convert it to a part of its whole Now here you see these four Elements which had the same destiny which return to the condition they had some few days before quitted so we may say that in a man there are all things necessary to compose a tree and in a tree to compose a man And in this manner all will be found to be in all but we want a Prometheus who would rob Natures brest and render us sensible which I am willing to call Materia Prima These were the entertainments we past the time withal for this little Spaniard had a pretty wit yet our discourses were all by night for the multitude of people which from six a clock in the morning till night came to see us at our lodgings would have interrupted us for some threw stones at us other nuts others grass there was no talk but of the Kings Beasts we were every day duly served at our hours and the King Queen did often take the pains to feel my belly to try if I grew big for they burnt with an impatient desire to have some of the race of these little creatures I know not whether it was by being more attentive then my Male to their Apishness and tones but I learnt sooner then he to understand their language and to tattle a little which made them consider us after another manner then they did and presently the news run that there were two Savages found who for want of good nourishment were less then others and by a defect in their Parents seed wanted force in their fore-leggs to rest their bodies upon them This belief began to take root by spreading it self without the Doctors of the Countreys opposition saying that it were a terrible impiety to beleeve not onely Beasts but Monsters were of the same species as they there were more likelihood added the less passionate that our native Beasts participated the Priviledges of humanity and immortality by the consequence of being born in our Countrey then a Monstrous Animal who speaks of being born I know not where in the Moon and then observe the difference which is betwixt us and them we walk upon four paws because that God would not trust so precious a thing upon a less firm situation and he feared that going otherwise there might some ill happen to the man for which reason he took the pains for to seat him upon four pillars that he might not fall but disdaining to trouble himself with the Fabrick of these two Bruits he abandoned them to the Caprice of Nature who not fearing the loss of so small a matter rested them upon two leggs The very Birds have not had such hard measure as they for at least they have feathers to balance the weakness of their leggs with which they cast themselves into the Air when we chase them when as Nature depriving these two Monsters of two feet have rendered them incapable of scaping our justice After which see how their head is raised towards Heaven it is the scarcity that God hath inflicted them with of all things which are so placed for that supplicant posture shews that they complain to Heaven of their Creator and that they begg permission to accommodate themselves after our fashion but we have our heads downwards to contemplate the blessings we are masters of as if there were nothing in Heaven that we need envy I every day heard such discourses as these at my lodge and in fine they did so bridle the peoples opinion concerning this Article that it was decreed I should at most but pass for a Parrat without feathers for they confirmed those that were already perswaded that like a bird I had but two leggs which was the reason they put me in a Cage by the express order of the Privy-Council Where every day the Queens Bird-keeper had the care of teaching me to whistle as they doe here your Stares or Black-birds Indeed I was happy in not wanting food in the mean time among the Sonnets with which my Spectators dayly broke my head I learnt to speak as they did in short when I had past the difficulty of expressing my thoughts I related fine conceits the companies already entertained themselves with nothing but the gentleness of my words and the esteem they had of my wit arrived to that point that the Council was forced to publish an Edict by which it was forbidden to beleeve that I had any Reason with an express commandment to all persons of what quality or condition soever not to imagine but that it was by instinct whatsoever I did though never so rational In the interim the definition of what I was divided the Town in two parts that which was of my faction grew greater and greater every day and in fine in spight of the Anathema wherewith they frighted the multitude those that held with me demanded an Assembly of State to end this controversie They were a great while about the choice of who should judge the business But the Arbiters pacified their animosity by equalling the number of both interests who ordained I should be brought into the Assembly as I was But I was treated as severely as you can imagine my Examiners amongst other things questioned me in Philosophy I sincerely told them what heretofore my Regent had taught me but they made nothing of confuting me with more powerful reasons so that not being able to answer them I alleadged the Tenents or Principles of Aristotle which stood me in no more stead then my Sophisms had done for in two words they discovered to me the falseness of them This Aristotle said they whose Science you so largely boast did without doubt accommodate his Principles to his Philosophy instead of accommodating his Philosophy to his Principles and at least he ought to have proved them more reasonable then those of other Sects which you have mentioned to us When the Arbiters answers she chosen by consent of both parties have designed the Time accorded for the levying of their forces that of the March the number of Combatants the day and the place appointed for Battle all this with so much equality that there is not one single man more in one Army then in the other the maimed Soldiers of one side are all in one Company and when they come to joyn the Marshals of the field have a care to expose them to the maim'd of the other side The Gyants encounter Colosses Fencers those that are expert in their weapons the valiant the couragious

composed of nothing but these infinite Atoms most solid most incorruptible and most pure of which some are Cubiques others Parallelegrams others Angular others round others sharp or pointed others Pyramidical others Exagons and others Ovals all which act diversly according to their figure To prove which put an Ivory Bowl very round upon a very even place at the least impression you shall bestow upon it it will be a quarter of an hour without lying still to which I add that if it were as perfectly round as some of those Atoms are and the surface upon which it is put perfectly even it would never rest If art then can incline a Body to perpetual Motion Why shall not we beleeve Nature can do it it is so of the other Figures some whereof as the square require a lasting repose others a motion on one side others half motions as trepidations and the round whose being is motion meeting in conjunction with the Pyramidical may be makes what we call Fire because Fire doth not only act without repose but also pierces and penetrates easily the Fire moreover hath different effects according to the overture and qualities of the Angles when the round Figure is joyned as for example the Fire of Pepper is another thing then the Fire of Sugar and that of Sugar then that of Cinnamon that of Cinnamon then that of a Clove and this last then that of a Faggot Now the fire which is the constructor of the parts and the whole of the Universe hath pusht and gatheed into an Oak the quantity of Figures necessary to compose an Oak In fine these first and indivisible Atoms compose a Circle upon which without difficulty move the most cumbersome difficulties of Physick nay the very operation of the senses which no body yet could conceive I will easily explicate by these little Bodies let us begin with our fight which as the most incomprehensible deserves our first debate I conceive it is occasioned when the tunique of the eyes whose pores are like glass transmit that fiery dust which is called visual Rays and that it is stopt by some opaque matter which casts them back again then meeting in their way the image of what repercust them and that image being nothing but an infinite number of little bodies which are continually exhaled in an equal superficies with the subject beheld they throng it with them back to our eye I know you will object that a Glass is an Opaque Body very much closed and yet instead of driving back those other little Bodies it suffers it self to be pierced But my answer is that the pores of the glass is of the same Figure as the Atoms of Fire which pierce it as a wheaten sieve is not proper to sift oats nor an oaten one to sift wheat so a box of fit though very thin that lets sound penetrate it yet admits not the sight to do the same and a piece of Cristal that is transparent to the sight will admit no penetration with your finger I could not hold interrupting of him a great Poet and Philosopher of our World said I hath spoke after Epicurus and he after Democritus almost like you of these little Bodies wherefore you doe not much amaze me with this discourse I beseech you in untwining of it tell me how you will by these principles explicate the manner of representing your self in a glass that is very easie replied he for imagine to your self that those fires of your eyes having past through the Glass and finding behinde it a Body not transparent which rejects them they return the same way they came and finding those little Bodies travelling in an equal superficies upon the Glass they recal them to our eyes and our imagination warmer then any other of the faculties of our Soul attracts the most subtle of them wherewith the shapes at home a picture in little The operation of hearing is not harder to be conceived and to be more succinct let us consider it only in the Harmony of a Lute toucht by a Master of that are You will ask me How it is possible I should conceive a thing so far off me that I cannot see Is it that a spongeous matter goes out of my ears to inclose that Musick and so bring it back or doth that Player or Musitian engender another of the like species and another Lute in little which like an Eccho hath order to recant the same Ayrs unto me No But this Miracle proceeds that the string being drawn strikes those little Bodies of the which Ayr is composed into my Brain and these little corporal Nothings do sweetly pierce it so that according as the string is stretcht the sound is high because it strikes the Atoms the more vigorously and the Organ thus penetrated furnisheth our fancy with wherewithal to frame a picture if too little it happens that our memory not yet having finished its Image we are constrained to repeat to it the same sound to the end that of the Materials which furnished it as for example the measures of a Saraband it may take enough to finish the Image of that Saraband But this operation is nothing so marvellous as the others by which by the help of the same Organ we are sometimes stirred up to joy or Choler c. Which is done when in that motion those little Bodies meet with others in us stirred up in the same manner or which are susceptible by their own Figure of the like emotions for then the Newcomers excite their Landlords to move as they do and thus when a violent Air meets with the Fire of our Blood it inclines it to a violent motion and animates it to an outward course which we call ardor of courage or of the mind If the sound be sweeter and that it can raise but a less flame more shaken by conducting it through our Nerves Members and Pores of our flesh which causeth that tickling we stile joy thus it happens in the ebullution of the other Passions which will according as those little Bodies are flung more or less violently upon us according to the motion they receive by the rencountre of other motions and according as they find movable matter about us thus much for hearing The demonstration of the Touch I think is not more difficult when we conceive that from all palpable matters there is a perpetual emission of those little Bodies and according as we touch it there is more evaporated because we press them from the subject as water from a spunge the hard make the Organ sensible of their solidity the supple of their softness the rugged c. To prove which we cannot but cunningly feel with hands used or hardened in labour because of the thickness of the skin which being no longer porous nor animated hardly transmits these Atoms from the matter May be some would fain know where the Organ of Touching resides for my part I beleeve that it is spread