Coelum Terrae

Contextual Lexicon

These twenty-four entries begin with exact sentences from the modern reading and verified forms from the original wording. Each distinguishes its historical setting from a possible reflective application. The links return to the passage so that the surrounding argument remains available.

Claims and Their Grounds

“They speak of fine things, but never tell us on what grounds.” — source p. 78.

Source forms: grounds, Fundamentals.

Vaughan promises to discuss the art in rational terms and attacks accounts whose splendid upper stories have no visible foundations. The architectural image belongs to an argument about what a writer must supply to a reader. His own subsequent use of poetry shows that imagery itself is not the fault; the question is whether an image connects to an intelligible claim.

Reflective possibility: A reflective reading can distinguish the appeal of an explanation from the grounds that support it. An impressive vocabulary may invite attention, but it cannot complete the work of showing why a claim should be accepted.

Read with source p. 95, Mediation and the Ethics of Hearing and Listening Before Judgment.

Universal Sympathy

“The correspondence between the two worlds, or sanctuaries, consists in the original correspondence of their principles.” — source p. 80.

Source forms: Conformitie, Similitudes.

The two sanctuaries relate visible and invisible orders through the conformity of their principles. Vaughan distinguishes this universal relation from collections of curious correspondences between individual objects. His criticism is aimed at readers who mistake a few reported sympathies for knowledge of the bond of the whole.

Reflective possibility: For reflection, an analogy becomes more useful when its proposed relation can be stated. Resemblance may begin an inquiry; the reader still has to ask what connects the terms and how far that connection extends.

Read with source p. 124, One Thing and Many Descriptions and Mediation Between Contraries.

The Thing Beyond Its Name

‘Yet knowing the concept “matter” serves no purpose unless we know the thing to which the concept refers.’ — source p. 81.

Source forms: Matter, Thing.

Calling something matter does not give the student acquaintance with it. Vaughan moves from a general account of agent and patient to seeing, handling and trial. The sentence retains his commitment to a subject encountered in nature, even while his account also assigns that subject a divine origin.

Reflective possibility: A reader can apply the distinction to familiar intellectual habits: knowing the accepted word for an experience is different from attending to what the word describes. This reflective use does not settle the historical identity of Vaughan’s matter.

Read with source p. 136, One Thing and Many Descriptions and Finding Rather Than Making.

The Virgin Mother

“She exists before them all, for she is their mother.” — source p. 83.

Source forms: Mother, Virgin.

First matter is represented as a mother because particular creatures have not yet been generated from it. Its virginity therefore describes a generative relation, rather than the absence of every internal distinction. Red and white appearances belong to different preparations in the surrounding passage and should be read in their sequence.

Reflective possibility: The image can suggest a capacity that has not yet taken a particular form. Such a reading should preserve the text’s distinction between a source of forms and the forms already produced from it.

Read with source p. 105, One Thing and Many Descriptions and Treasure and Its Use.

Generation Without Violence

“She yields to nothing but love, for her end is generation, and generation has never yet been accomplished by violence.” — source p. 84.

Source forms: Love, Generation.

The personified matter yields to love and has generation as its end. Courtship continues the preceding account of the virgin and the fire of nature. Vaughan uses the language of affection to describe a mode of working in which the subject’s capacity matters; he returns later to the damage caused by excessive heat.

Reflective possibility: A possible reflective application concerns the difference between eliciting a capacity and forcing a result. Patience here is active attention to conditions, rather than a promise that effort alone will produce the desired transformation.

Read with source p. 120, Heat and the Measure of Cooperation and The Measure of Heat.

Many Names for One Subject

“They also call her their twofold mercury and azoth, begotten by the influences of the two globes, celestial and terrestrial.” — source p. 85.

Source forms: Mercurie, Water.

Stone, gum, sea, water, mercury and fire are coordinated names within Vaughan’s account of first matter. Some describe appearance, others origin or action. The surrounding exclusions prevent a simple substitution of an ordinary substance for every occurrence of the word water.

Reflective possibility: When a passage changes names, the reader can record what feature each name makes visible. This keeps symbolic richness connected to the argument and avoids assuming that every image introduces a different subject.

Read with source p. 98, One Thing and Many Descriptions and The Invisible Earth.

Finding Rather Than Making

“Man may find it where Nature leaves it; making or extracting the seed is not his office.” — source p. 86.