* A blow given to a rock placed in the water will kill all the fishes and other animals found below and near it.

* A blow given to the cord of the colla1 will double the torment of the one being tortured.

* A blow given to the bushel will lower the wheat that is in it.2

* I remind you to make your propositions and to cite the things written above by examples, and not by propositions, which would be too easy.

And you will state [them] in this manner:

Experiment.

* A blow given to any dense and weighty body will naturally3 pass on beyond this body, impacting anything found4 in the surrounding bodies, dense or rarefied as these may be. Verbi gratia. Suppose there are many fish5 in a pond swimming below a rock. If you give a great blow atop this rock, all the fish underneath or to the side of this rock will float, as though dead, to the surface of the water. And the reason is6 that anything impelled by a power greater than its own desires to flee before that,7 and the greater the force of the power that impels, the greater the flight of the thing impelled.8 And if this thing is dense and weighty, it will strike against any object getting in the way of its course;9 and if it is a light thing, it will follow its course in part, with but little damage to itself; and if the thing is stable and heavy, it will be damaged and ruined with the first contact that it finds in the blow, which10 blow will naturally pass throughout the entire continuity of the body that was struck,11 resounding clamorously not only in the body struck, but also in those bodies that surround it. And if there are any animals in these nearby bodies, they also will be penetrated by this clamor and movement in such a way that, not being able to resist, they will be left as though dead; and their pain will be like the pain that the hand receives when the stone that it holds is struck by a hammer.