_Hic intrat_ NATURA NATURATA, HUMANITY, _and_ STUDIOUS DESIRE, _portans figuram_.
The high, mighty, most excellent of all, The Fountain of goodness, virtue, and cunning, Which is eterne[11] of power most potential, The Perfection and First Cause of everything, I mean that only high Nature naturing. Lo, He by His goodness hath ordained and created Me here His minister, called Nature Naturate. Wherefore I am the very naturate nature, The immediate minister for the preservation Of everything in His kind to endure, And cause of generation and corruption Of that thing that is brought to destruction. Another thing still I bring forth again, Thus wondersly I work, and never in vain. The great world behold, lo, divided wondersly Into two regions, whereof one I call The ethereal region with the heavens high, Containing the planets, stars, and spheres all; The lower region, called the elemental, Containing these four elements below, The fire, the air, the water, and earth also. But yet the elements and other bodies all Beneath take their effects and operations Of the bodies in the region ethereal. By their influence and constellations, They cause here corruptions and generations; For if the movings above should once cease, Beneath should be neither increase nor decrease. These elements of themselves so single be Unto divers forms cannot be divided, Yet they commix together daily, you see, Whereof divers kinds of things be engendered, Which things eftsones, when they be corrupted, Each element I reduce to his first estate, So that nothing can be utterly annihilate; For though the form and fashion of anything That is a corporal body be destroyed, Yet every matter remaineth in his being, Whereof it was first made and formed; For corruption of a body commixed Is but the resolution by time and space Of every element to his own place. For who that will take any body corporal, And do what he can it to destroy, To break it or grind it into powder small, To wash, to drown, to bren it, or to dry, Yet the air and fire thereof naturally To their own proper places will ascend, The water to the water, the earth to the earth tend; For if heat or moisture of anything certain By fire or by water be consumed, Yet earth or ashes on earth will remain, So the elements can never be destroyed. For essentially there is now at this tide As much fire, air, water, earth, as was Ever before this time, neither more nor less; Wherefore thou, man--now I speak to thee-- Remember that thou art compound and create Of these elements, as other creatures be, Yet they have not all like noble estate, For plants and herbs grow and be insensate. Brute beasts have memory and their wits five, But thou hast all those and soul intellective; So by reason of thine understanding, Thou hast dominion of other beasts all, And naturally thou shouldst desire cunning To know strange effects and causes natural; For he that studieth for the life bestial,[12] As voluptuous pleasure and bodily rest, I account him never better than a beast.