ls run in the mines, and Plants
grow in the Fields, and generally all bodies be therein engendered which
are call'd mixt or composed.

And amongst other things, because that next the Stars, I know nothing in
the world but Fire, which produceth light, I studied to make all clearly
understood which belongs to its nature; how it's made, how it's fed,
how sometimes it hath heat onely without light, and sometimes onely
light without heat; how it can introduce several colours into several
bodies, and divers other qualities; how it dissolves some, and hardens
others; how it can consume almost all, or convert them into ashes and
smoak: and last of all, how of those ashes, by the only violence of its
action, it forms glass. For this transmutation of ashes into glass,
seeming to me to be as admirable as any other operation in Nature, I
particularly took pleasure to describe it.

Yet would I not inferre from all these things, that this World was
created after the manner I had proposed. For it is more probable that
God made it such as it was to be, from the beginning. But it's certain,
and 'tis an opinion commonly received amongst the Divines, That the
action whereby he now preserveth it, is the same with that by which he
created it. So that, although at the beginning he had given it no other
form but that of a Chaos (provided, that having established the Laws of
Nature, he had afforded his concurrence to it, to work as it used to do)
we may beleeve (without doing wrong to the miracle of the Creation) that
by that alone all things which are purely material might in time have
rendred themselves such as we now see them: and their nature is far
easier to conceive, when by little and little we see them brought forth
so, then when we consider them quite form'd all at once.

From the description of inanimate Bodies and Plants, I pass'd to that of
Animals, and particularly to that of Men. But because I had not yet
knowledge enough to speak of them in the same stile as of the others; to
wit, in demonstrating effects by their causes, and shewing from what
seeds, and in what manner Nature ought to produce them; I contented my
self to suppose, That God form'd the body of a Man altogether like one
of ours; aswel the exteriour figure of its members, as in the interiour
conformity of its organs; without framing it of other matter then of
that which I had described; and without putting in it at the beginning
any reasonable soul, or any other th