Water as the vital humour of the earth's body
Water rising from sea to mountain tops, likened to sap in the vine and blood in the body
Across this bifolio opening Leonardo sets out his microcosm analogy between water and the living body. Water is the vital humour of the arid earth, and the same cause that drives it through the earth's ramifying veins, against the natural downward course of heavy things, moves the humours in every animate body. He marvels that water rises from the lowest depths of the sea to the highest mountain tops, pours down through broken veins to the sea, and climbs again in continual revolution — comparing it to sap that rises in the vine to its cut branches and to blood that mounts and bursts through the veins of the forehead. A small coiled sketch sits at the head of the left-hand column.
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Water's continual revolution from sea to summit
Water rises from the lowest depth of the sea to the highest summits of the mountains, pours through the broken veins back to the low sea, and swiftly climbs again, turning from inner parts to outer and from lowest to highest. Now rising by accidental motion, now falling by its natural course, it circles endlessly through the terrestrial passages.
The earth's ramifying veins
The moving water travels through the earth's branching veins against the natural course of heavy things, treating the body of the earth as a living organism laced with channels. This is the geological half of Leonardo's body-of-the-earth analogy.
The vine as a model for rising water
As the water climbs from the lower part of the vine to its cut branches, falls back upon the roots, penetrates them and rises again to the break before falling once more, so does the water of the earth. The vine's circulation of sap is offered as a direct botanical parallel.
Blood and humours in animate bodies
The cause that moves the earth's water is the very same that moves the humours in all species of animate bodies, and as low blood rises and pours through the broken veins of the forehead, so water mounts from the depths of the sea to the mountain summits.
