FIVE ELEMENTS Lyrics

This most beautiful system of sun, planets and comets

Could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of

An intelligent and powerful being

Blind metaphysical necessity

Which is certainly the same always and everywhere

Could produce no variety of things

All that diversity of natural things

Which we find suited to different times and places

Could arise from nothing but the ideas

And will of a being necessarily existing

Here we find a universal method of checks and balances

Water promotes the existence of wood

Which promotes fire, which burns things to the earth

In the earth we find metals

Which through condensation promote the formation of water

However, water douses or controls fire

Which melts or controls metal

Which cuts or controls wood, which plows or controls earth

Which soaks up or controls water

Harmony requires checks and balances

If any one element becomes too strong or too weak

Imbalance occurs, illness sets in

And harmony is lost

A fifth element must be added to these four

To explain the behaviour of the heavenly bodies

Whereas the terrestrial elements of earth, water, air, and fire

Were all mutable and corruptible

Coming into being and passing away

No change could be perceived in the celestial realm

Moreover while the natural motion of the four terrestrial elements

Was towards or away from the centre of the cosmos in a straight line

The natural motion of the heavenly bodies was uniform circular motion

Around that centre

Therefore inferred

That the cosmos above the terrestrial sphere

That is, from the moon upwards

Was not made out of any of the mutable terrestrial elements

But must be composed of a different

Unchangeable substance, the fifth element

or quintessence, which is Aether

Aether, an element that fills the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere

That's quintessential arts.