I mean by Elements certain primitive and simple, or perfectly unmingled bodies; which not being made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the ingredients of which all those called perfectly mixed bodies are immediately compounded.

Nature always acts by the simplest ways.

That fondness for science, that affability and condescension which God shows to the learned, that promptitude with which he protects and supports them in the elucidation of obscurities and in the removal of difficulties.

-- Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi