THE SECOND PART

the text resumes mid-thought regarding the Earth's center and to which the sidereal rays, striking and condensing into a narrow space, are driven backward through the whole orb and sublimated or distilled. From these, every genus of metals and minerals is produced, with the Earth and Water providing them with bodies. If this seems fictitious, one must know that this Philosophy can be demonstrated by irrefutable reasons. I do not embrace this alone, but many others do as well, among whom that most celebrated Sentivogius Michael Sendivogius, a 17th-century alchemist holds no small place. He writes that there is a vacuum in the center of the earth in which nothing can rest. The very reason of Nature seems to prove this, for in its middle point, a void space is necessarily required into which all the powers of the Stars might pour themselves, act upon one another, and excite an immense heat. They grant no delay or rest to any thing in that place, but rather, the broken virtues of the stars themselves are forced to recede therefrom, seeking the circumference, where, joining themselves to the moist and pure earth, they exclude the metallic fetus. Thus, one should not wonder that an most intense heat dominates there, since all the stars, the Sun, the Moon, and other Planets, together with countless stars, eagerly cast their powers thither. If you were to weigh the magnitude of the Sun alone, which according to the calculation of astronomers exceeds the earthly globe 64 times, not to mention countless other great stars casting their effluvia into the bosom of the earth, what unspeakable and immense heat do you believe they bring to those things which gather their powers in the center, rendering them manifest and efficacious. Consider now how much a single handful of solar rays