262 S Y L V A BOOK iv 



so easily dissolves and corrupts substances so much 

 harder, when they are buried in the moist womb of 

 the earth, whilst this tender and flexible as it is, shall 

 be able in time to displace and rend in sunder whole 

 rocks of stones, and sometimes to cleave them beyond 

 the force of iron wedges, so as even to remove mount- 

 ains ? For thus no weights are observed able to sup- 

 press the victorious palm : And thus our tree (like man 

 whose inverted symbol he is) being sown in corruption, 

 rises in glory, by little and little ascending into an 

 hard erect stem of comely dimensions, into a solid 

 tower, as it were ; and that which but lately a single 

 ant would easily have born to his little cavern, now 

 capable of resisting the fury, and braving the rage 

 of the most impetuous storms, magni mehercie artificis, 

 clausisse totum in tarn exiguo (to use Seneca's expression) 

 & horror est consider anti. * 



For is it not plainly astonishing how these minute 

 atoms, rather than visible eggs, should contain the 

 foetus exquisitely formed, even while yet wrap'd in 

 their secondines, like infants in the animal womb, till 

 growing too big for the dark confinements, they break 

 forth, and after a while more distinctly display every 

 limb and member compleatly perfect, with all their 

 apparel, tire and trim of beautiful and flourishing 

 vegetables, endow'd with all the qualities of the 

 species. 



2 1 . Contemplate we again, what it is which begins 

 the motion, and kindles the flame of these automata^ 

 causing them first to radiate in the earth, and then to 

 display their top in the air, so different poles, (as I 

 may call them) in such different mediums ; what it is 

 imparts this elastic, peristaltic and other motions, so 



* Epist. 53- 



