of which it is composed.

The same elements, the same principles, are found in the formation of
minerals, as well as in their decomposition, whether natural or
artificial. We find that earth, diversely modified, wrought, and
combined, serves to increase their bulk, and give them more or less
density and gravity. Air and water contribute to make their particles
cohere; the igneous matter, or inflammable principle, tinges them with
colour, and sometimes plainly indicates its presence, by the brilliant
scintillation which motion elicits from them. These stones and metals,
these bodies, so compact and solid, are disunited, are destroyed, by the
agency of air, water, and fire; which the most ordinary analysis is
sufficient to prove, as well as a multitude of experience, to which our
eyes are the daily evidence.

Animals, plants, and minerals, after a lapse of time, give back to
Nature; that is to say, to the general mass of things, to the universal
magazine, the elements, or principles, which they have borrowed: The
earth retakes that portion of the body of which it formed the basis and
the solidity; the air charges itself with these parts, that are,
analogous to it, and with those particles which are light and subtle;
water carries off that which is suitable to liquescency; fire, bursting
its chains, disengages itself, and rushes into new combinations with
other bodies.

The elementary particles of the animal, being thus dissolved, disunited,
and dispersed; assume new activity, and form new combinations: thus,
they serve to nourish, to preserve, or destroy new beings; among others,
plants, which arrived at their maturity, nourish and preserve new
animals; these in their turn yielding to the same fate as the first.