The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations.

The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.

This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of Philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my Readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.

The seed of a tree has the nature of a branch or twig or bud. It is a part of the tree, but if separated and set in the earth to be better nourished, the embryo or young tree contained in it takes root and grows into a new tree.

As I am writing, another illustration of ye generation of hills proposed above comes into my mind. Milk is as uniform a liquor as ye chaos was. If beer be poured into it & ye mixture let stand till it be dry, the surface of ye curdled substance will appear as rugged & mountanous as the Earth in any place.

I see I have made my self a slave to Philosophy.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.