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William Shakespeare
And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
Fire as the sun's deputy
Jean d’Espagnet (c. 1564–after 1637), a French jurist and alchemical writer, is generally credited with an anonymously published work on the secret of Hermetic philosophy. The text arranges its thoughts in short numbered sections. One of them gives the fire within the stone an extraordinary succession of titles. Something that might ordinarily be recognised from heat or flame is assigned a rank, a descent and an office to perform.
A ruler within the stone
Fire placed in the Stone is Nature’s Prince, Sol’s Son and Vicar, moving and digesting matter and perfecting all things therein, if it shall attain its liberty […]
– Jean d’Espagnet, The Hermetic Arcanum, 1893, p. 33.[1]
The series begins with a ruler and leads to the sun. As its son and deputy the fire in the stone is to accomplish something otherwise visible on a much greater scale in the heavens. The words that follow give it activities. Fire moves the matter, digests it and brings things within it to perfection. A reader picturing only a brilliant flame misses an important feature. This is an activity within the material, whose outcome becomes apparent only over the course of a change.
Why its work takes time
The qualification near the end also merits attention. The fire must attain its liberty if it is to perform its work. Its high rank by itself cannot explain why anything actually happens. The conditions in which a power becomes effective belong to the explanation too. The stone is both a boundary and a scene of action. Through it the reader is asked to consider how a power assigned to the heavens can operate within a single body and unfold there over a period of its own.
As You Like It · p. 18
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