The Nature Of Water

Water is composed of long and smooth earth-aether particles. Most of them:

• bend when the fire-aether around them has more force than usual
• stay rigid when the fire-aether around them has less force than usual.*

However, there are also larger earth-aether particles [in the water] that cannot be bent by the fire-aether. These form salts.

The smaller particles that can always be bent form spirits or life waters, which never freeze.

When the parts of common water completely cease to bend, their most natural shape is curved in various ways. Their shape is not like straight reeds.

This is why they, as ice, occupy more space. It is because the fire-aether is no longer available to bend them and make their shapes fit one another.

This can be observed by filling a flask that has a long and narrow neck with hot water then exposing it to the air when it freezes. The water will visibly drop little by little until it reaches a certain degree of coldness. Then it will swell and rise little by little until it is completely frozen.

Thus, the same cold that condensed or contracted it at first will later decompress it.

Water that has been kept on the fire for a long time freezes more quickly than other water. This is because its most non-rigid particles have already evaporated, leaving only the rigid ones.

Descartes Elementary Theory (Anti-Atoms)

The small parts of terrestrial bodies are not made up of atoms or indivisible particles.

Rather, they are all made of the same matter [earth-aether]. Each one can be divided again in an infinite number of ways. This matter differs from one another like stones of various shapes that have been cut from the same rock.*

To avoid conflict with the Philosophers, I do not wish to deny anything at all that they imagine in bodies beyond what I have stated, such as:

• their substantial forms
• their real qualities
• similar things.

My reasons should be all the more approved as I make them depend on fewer things.