Aqua vitae

“ And there is that celestiall spirit residing in Aqua vitæ, so susceptible of all qualities, proprieties, and vertues, that she can make her hot, empregning it with hot things, cold with cold things, and so of the rest; being shee is naturall, conformably to our soule, inclinable to good and evill, for although it consists of the foure Elements, they are therein so proportioned, that the one doth not domineer over the other. ”

“ The third, is yet more dry and light, and more free from unctuosity, almost of the nature of that Quintessence, which we observe in Aqua vitæ soveraignly depured: therefore it may mount not onely to the highest Region of the Aire, and that of Fire contiguous; but escape yet whole and safe higher then the Heaven, with which, for its greatest subtilty and depuration which it hath gotten in this long way, it hath a great conformity: For being come to the Globe of the Sun, it is there perfected to concoct and to digest into a pure and cleare light ”

“ This is rendered certain by Bradford's difficulty (as stated by himself) with Captain Jones, previously referred to, showing that the ship had her own supply of beer, separate from that of the colonists, and that it was intended for the seamen as well as the officers.
Bradford mentions "aqua vitae" as a constituent of their lunch on the exploring party of November 15. "Strong waters" (or Holland gin) are mentioned as a part of the entertainment given Massasoit on his first visit, and they find frequent mention otherwise. Wine finds no mention. ”

“ The Bath is an animal instinct: and, par excellence, a human instinct; it is as much a necessity of our nature as drink. We drink because we thirst—an interior sense. We bathe because water, the material of drink, is a desire of the outward man—an exterior sense. An animal, whether beast or bird, pasturing or straying near a limpid stream, first satisfies the inward sense, and then delights the outward sense. A man, be he savage or civilized, can no more resist the gratification of bathing his wearied limbs in a warm transparent pool than he can resist the cup of water when athirst. ”

“ Baptism should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Water has in fact not merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks, more clearly; he feels himself freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How many saints have had recourse to the natural qualities of water, in order to overcome the assaults of the devil! What was denied by Grace has been granted by Nature. ”

“ Few of us sufficiently appreciate pure cold water. What will not man submit to rather than adopt such means of cure—adapt himself to such self-denial? What pain will he not endure; what poisons swallow or rub into his flesh, rather than consent to seek relief from such a humble source?
Animals, when thirsty, repair to the brook to quench their thirst; when wounded, to assuage the pain. Water is nature’s medicine and man despises it. ”

“ Does not all this throw some light on what our Lord meant in what he said to the woman, 'It shalt be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life;' and this: 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water?' There is nothing like a dead sea here. All, all is life from the Lord. But water is beautiful. Who does not admire a clear, flowing spring or river! In this respect water is an emblem of the Lord's Word. ”

“ Water’s a thing human beings can’t breathe, isn’t it? Well, you are breathing. So this can’t be water.”
“I see that,” said Mavis, “but the soft seaweed won’t stand up in air, and it does in water.”
“Oh, you’ve found out, have you?” said the Mermaid. “Well, then, perhaps it is water. Only you see it can’t be. Everything’s like that down here.”
“Once you said you lived in water, and you wanted to be wet,” said Mavis.
“Mer-people aren’t responsible for what they say in your world. I told you that, you know,” the Mermaid reminded them. ”

“ And why did He call the grace of the Spirit water? Because by water all things subsist; because water brings forth grass and living things; because the water of the showers comes down from heaven; because it comes down one in form, but works in many forms. For one fountain watereth the whole of Paradise, and one and the same rain comes down upon all the world, yet it becomes white in the lily, and red in the rose, and purple in violets and hyacinths, and different and varied in each several kind: so it is one in the palm-tree, and another in the vine, and all in all things ”

“ Admit a full glare of summer sun to the aquarium, and forth-with the water loses its pellucid fluidity, and becomes deeply tinged throughout of a dull green, as if some pigment had been dissolved in it. Instead of plants attached to stones and glass only, and animals that float unseen, the whole of the water is occupied by visible masses of animal and vegetable life; and, if the fishes suffer, it will be from undue heat, not from the addition to the element in which they live of this new mass of being. ”

“ And we are led to recognise the truth of my preliminary proposition—that the bath is an instinct, and that, being an instinct, its survival of a race is no longer a wonder, but is a law of nature—a law of the universe. ”

“ But why did the waters receive the command to bring forth the moving creature that hath life and the earth to bring forth the living creature? We conclude that, by their nature, swimming creatures appear only to have an imperfect life, because they live in the thick element of water. They are hard of hearing, and their sight is dull because they see through the water; they have no memory, no imagination, no idea of social intercourse. ”

“ The last two thousand years, comprising the Piscean Age, has certainly been one of water and the many uses of that element have been emphasised, and sea and lake and river navigation has been brought to a high degree of efficiency.
3 What is the Aquarian Age? The human race is to-day standing upon the cusp of the Piscean-Aquarian Ages. Aquarius is an air sign and the New Age is already noted for remarkable inventions for the use of air, electricity, magnetism, etc. Men navigate the air as fish do the sea, and send their thoughts spinning around the world with the speed of lightning. ”

“ We do not have to make it rise any more than the engineer who sinks the bore-pipe for an artesian well has to make the water rise in it; the water does that by its own energy, springing as a fountain a hundred feet into the air. Just so we shall find a fountain of Essence-of-Life ready to spring up in ourselves, inexhaustible and continually increasing in its flow, as One taught long ago to a woman at a wayside well. ”

“ Everywhere, shameless they lie, in fountain-basins, in streams and roomy wells; nor by drinking is their thirst quenched so long as life remains. Many of these are too weak to rise, and die in the very water ”

“ It has also to be observed, that every part of the body, melting again into the river of life continually as it does, is also kept perpetually drenched in blood by means of the blood-vessels, and more than nine-tenths of that wonderful current is pure water. Water plays as great a part, indeed, in the economy of that little world, the body of man, as it still more evidently does in the phenomenal life of the world at large. ”

“ God has ordained such a wealth of organic forms that, wherever the conditions of life are found, life takes possession of the spot, whether it be the bottom of the ocean, the dripping roof of a cave, the expanse of the viewless air, or the mimic lake I call an aquarium. ”

“ He shall not alone receive the streams from "the Fountain of living water," which is God Himself, but he shall in himself be a fountain of perennial water, from which streams shall flow, not only into his own inward being, but outwardly upon all around him—streams of light, of charity, of consolation, and of saving health ”

“ It seems as if there were a spirit moving not only upon the waters, but in the waters; as if the great deep were a living organism, of which the ebb and flow were like the circulation of the blood in the human frame. ”

“ Also the exterior and outward shape or form makes some bodies more apt to sink then others; Indeed, the outward form and shape of Creatures is one of the chief causes of either sinking or swimming. But to conclude, water in its interior nature is of a mean or middle degree, as neither too rare, nor too grave a body; and for its exterior quality, it is in as high a degree for wetness, as fire is for heat; and being apt both to divide, and to unite, it can bear a burden, and devour a burden, so that some bodies may swim, and others sink ”

“ Now, nose a-twitch, he once more pursued the silver streams alive with suns, refreshing his spirit with the sight of them. He was fretted by no problems about what he was doing. He had solved them all with one of his characteristically sharp distinctions: there was the sacred water, the sparklingly clear water to create with, and there was the water with character, the water to drink. ”

“ It is manifestly suggested by the cleansing qualities of water, and has exercised an important function in the development of certain moral ideas and ideals. Bathing in running water to cleanse the stains of the body led on to, and combined with, the concept of cleansing the stains of the soul. But even thus the dominant suggestion of life declares itself, as is specially obvious in the case of Christian baptism, where the washing with water symbolises not only the cleansing of the soul, but the new birth, the higher life of the spirit. ”

“ Now let us turn and consider for a moment Nature’s aquarium—the sea. It covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface, and it has been explored to the depth of eight miles at places, without finding bottom. The average depth, however, is about 21⁄2 miles. All this immense mass of salt water is inhabited with a fauna and flora in a state of nature. That is, the hand of man has done nothing in the way of taming or cultivating them. They are absolutely wild, whilst a large part of the earth is subject to man’s dominion, and he was commanded to subdue it. ”

“ But she rose again to the surface in an instant by the indomitable influence of that instinct for self-preservation which no human being, when immersed in the deep water, can resist if the art of swimming has been attained. ”

“ A love of cold-water bathing can perhaps be carried to excess, as in the case of those self-devoted Spartan swimmers, who, every morning, even in winter, assemble on the banks of the Serpentine, and audaciously defying their own instinct, plunge into the freezing water, even though they have first to break through the icy covering under which it is concealed by nature: the strongest constitution must suffer sooner or later from this treatment. ”

“ Toastmaster and Gentlemen, I speak to-night of water. What visions does that word conjure up! What delectable thoughts does it bring to the contemplative mind. Water, I maintain, is the most beneficent, the most benign and the most beautiful of all the elements with which a generous Creator has endowed this mundane sphere. ”

“ However, you shall shortly be convinced that by the ingenuity of man these seemingly insuperable difficulties are capable of being overcome, and that, when driven out of the air by the stifling heat and vermin you have noticed, he can adapt himself to an aquatic life, and prove therein as much superior to the proper denizens of the watery element, as he is, under other circumstances, to the inhabitants of the dry land. ”

“ You are a formless water that will trickle down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable of thought, which all its life long in its aquarium will continue to dash itself, a hundred times a day, against a wall of glass, always mistaking it for water. ”

“ Therefore, if the mere nature of water, in that it is the appropriate material for washing away, leads men to flatter themselves with a belief in omens of purification, how much more truly will waters render that service through the authority of God, by whom all their nature has been constituted! If men think that water is endued with a medicinal virtue by religion, what religion is more effectual than that of the living God? ”

“ The purity of the fluid impresses itself, through the eye, upon the mind, and its power of removing all impurity is felt to the soul. “Wash and be clean,” is the murmuring call of the waters, as they overflow their rocky basins, or grassy vases, and deeply sunk in depravity must that man be who could put to unholy uses one of nature’s fountains. ”

“ In the stream of water the fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. ”

“ Though this paper must have an end, there is no end to the teaching of the aquarium. It is a watery microcosm of living and dead wonders, and we need not marvel that the balance of life and death may be observed in its succession of changes, because all the physical forces of the universe are locked up within a single bead of dew, and all the functions of organic creation are comprised in the economy of a monas termo. ”

“ Deeply suggestive also is the saying which, if not rightly attributed to him, is at least characteristic of his school—"All things are full of the gods." We may therefore infer that the physical properties of water are such as to suggest the ideas which have culminated in modern animism. That is to say, water is capable of producing intellectual and spiritual, as well as what are termed physical effects. ”