XXII

command in the Sacred Genesis, chapter 1, and the course of nature, it wonderfully takes on a different nature and species there, and is specified in different ways, and produces various wonders, and so forth.

Hence Lullius and Sendivogius rightly said that the first matter of the Stone, namely the universal spirit, exists in all created sublunary things; indeed, as Morienes said to King Khalid, it exists in me, in you, and in all living things. Therefore it is certain that unless this universal spirit were present in all animals and vegetables, etcetera, they would not exist for even a moment, as Ripley adds. Indeed, it is similarly present in all individual metals and minerals, since they proceed from this first celestial vapor joined to its salt, although now in metals it is dried out and extinguished, and lacking generative power, it would be useless, even if it could be extracted. This, however, is impossible, since nature does not allow a return to the beginning original: "regressus in natura". And in minerals it is infected and clothed in another nature, and so it is unfit for this, as Richardus Anglicus deeply declares in his Correctorium, chapter 10. Likewise, in the air also, which we breathe, this hidden "food of life," as Sendivogius says, is present, just as it is in us and in vegetables, etcetera. But in the air, and in any other subjects (except for this one unique subject of ours truly filled with the wonderful spirit of life), it exists there in such a small quantity, because it is dispersed everywhere in the air, and diffused in other subjects, and mixed with vapors, earthy juices, and water. Indeed, it is so specified that extraction is impossible.