The Most Secret Rosary of the Philosophers

...moreover. He distinguished all sensitive things, as well as all vegetable and mineral things, into diverse species, composed from the density of the elements. When these are dissolved by death, they do not undeservedly return to earth and water, as if to their own materia matter. For the density of all elements naturally tends downward to its center, that is, to the earth, as the mother of all things consisting of an earthly nature. The third [principle] is the term of magnitude and growth, so that each thing may increase its own likeness in its own species. And some of these are made of dissimilar parts, such as flesh, blood, bones, veins, nerves, and similar things, like man. Some are made of wood, bark, leaves, and similar things, like a tree. But some are made of similar parts, like those that are of one essence throughout, as is seen in metals. Those things that are made of dissimilar parts possess within themselves their own seed, from which they multiply and grow, as is seen in all animate things and shrubs. But those that consist of similar parts do not multiply unless they are reduced to their first matter. Wherefore the philosopher says—