transparent body. On the one hand it flows, slips, and runs away;
and on the other it assumes all the forms of the bodies that
surround it, having properly none of its own. If water were more
rarefied, or thinner, it would be a kind of air; and so the whole
surface of the earth would be dry and sterile. There would be none
but volatiles; no living creature could swim; no fish could live;
nor would there be any traffic by navigation. What industrious and
sagacious hand has found means to thicken the water, by subtilising
the air, and so well to distinguish those two sorts of fluid bodies?
If water were somewhat more rarefied, it could no longer sustain
those prodigious floating buildings, called ships. Bodies that have
the least ponderosity would presently sink under water. Who is it
that took care to frame so just a configuration of parts, and so
exact a degree of motion, as to make water so fluid, so penetrating,
so slippery, so incapable of any consistency: and yet so strong to
bear, and so impetuous to carry off and waft away, the most unwieldy
bodies? It is docile; man leads it about as a rider does a well-
managed horse. He distributes it as he pleases; he raises it to the
top of steep mountains, and makes use of its weight to let it fall,
in order to rise again, as high as it was at first. But man who
leads waters with such absolute command is in his turn led by them.
Water is one of the greatest moving powers that man can employ to
supply his defects in the most necessary arts, either through the
smallness or weakness of his body. But the waters which,
notwithstanding their fluidity, are such ponderous bodies, do
nevertheless rise above our heads, and remain a long while hanging
there. Do you see those clouds that fly, as it were, on the wings
of the winds? If they should fall, on a sudden, in watery pillars,
rapid like a torrent, they would drown and destroy everything where
they should happen to fall, and the other grounds would remain dry.