Natural Table of the Correspondences Existing Between God, Man, and the Universe

argillaceous substances, and to calcareous earths; these enormous beds of whole and perfectly preserved shells, which are encountered in several places on Earth.

Moreover, one cannot dispense with recognizing equally the action of water in these great events: everything announces to us that it acted there with as much power as fire; for it still consolidates every day basalts, lavas, and as many vitrifiable, metallic, and calcareous substances as it dissolves, just as fire divides as much as it consolidates and vitrifies. Finally, if the action of fire is still demonstrated before our eyes, by offering us volcanoes even in the middle of the seas, that of water is no less sensible, in that it daily operates terrestrial decompositions and recompositions. For it would not be having the first idea of Nature to believe that fire can act there without water, and water without fire, since they are always contained within one another, and since without their combination, unknown to men, Nature itself would not be, and nothing within it would have form.

If we are convinced that fire acted in the first times of the explosion of things with infinitely more activity than it does today, and that this diminution of heat is the