FIVE ELEMENTS

This most beautiful system of sun, planets and comets Could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of An intelligent and powerful being Blind metaphysical necessity Which is certainly the same always and everywhere Could produce no variety of things All that diversity of natural things Which we find suited to different times and places Could arise from nothing but the ideas And will of a being necessarily existing Here we find a universal method of checks and balances Water promotes the existence of wood Which promotes fire, which burns things to the earth In the earth we find metals Which through condensation promote the formation of water However, water douses or controls fire Which melts or controls metal Which cuts or controls wood, which plows or controls earth Which soaks up or controls water Harmony requires checks and balances If any one element becomes too strong or too weak Imbalance occurs, illness sets in And harmony is lost A fifth element must be added to these four To explain the behaviour of the heavenly bodies Whereas the terrestrial elements of earth, water, air, and fire Were all mutable and corruptible Coming into being and passing away No change could be perceived in the celestial realm Moreover while the natural motion of the four terrestrial elements Was towards or away from the centre of the cosmos in a straight line The natural motion of the heavenly bodies was uniform circular motion Around that centre Therefore inferred That the cosmos above the terrestrial sphere That is, from the moon upwards Was not made out of any of the mutable terrestrial elements But must be composed of a different Unchangeable substance, the fifth element or quintessence, which is Aether Aether, an element that fills the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere That's quintessential arts.