The Golden Chain of Homer

184. Why must different degrees or conditions of a subject be distinguished?

185. How does the account connect a visible alteration with the separation of principles?

186. What role does the implanted spirit play in the explanation?

187. What can a change of smell or appearance establish on its own?

188. How is the process connected with the possibility of a renewed form?

189. Which qualification prevents the description from becoming one simple recipe for every material?

190. How does the definition sharpen the key metaphor of the preceding chapter?

Book I Chapter 18 the Results of Putrefaction

Read with: I.18.

191. What does putrefaction make accessible that was previously concealed?

192. How does the author relate its products to the original principles?

193. What is meant by moving from a bound state to a state available for further work?

194. How could separation make regeneration possible?

195. Why does the order of the resulting portions matter?

196. Which earlier distinction between subtle and coarse returns here?

197. What would count as a change in a subject’s specific form?

198. What further operation is needed before an opened subject becomes a perfected product?

199. How does the chapter avoid treating destruction as absolute disappearance?

200. Which claim about putrefaction is most consequential for the operations in Book II?

Book I Chapter 19 Volatile Acid and Alkali

Read with: I.19.

201. What sequence connects the volatile, the acid and the alkali?

202. How is the reverse sequence made possible?

203. What role does the acid play between the two extremes?

204. Why are examples from wine and its products useful to the author?

205. How does repeated treatment alter what first appeared to be a fixed distinction?

206. What does conjunction require besides the presence of its ingredients?

207. How does the author explain the relation of oil to acid?

208. Which examples test whether common names conceal different operative conditions?

209. How should alternate readings of a quantity affect a reader’s confidence in a historical procedure?

210. What would be lost if the whole chapter were reduced to a simple list of three substances?

Book I Chapter 20 Universal and Particular Principles

Read with: I.20.

211. What makes a volatile principle universal rather than particular?

212. How does specification change a common principle’s relation to an individual body?

213. Why should a shared origin not make every material an equally suitable substitute?

214. What differences in strength or purity can exist within one named principle?

215. How does the chapter organise the relation among volatile, acid and alkali?

216. What must a practitioner know before deciding that one principle is missing?

217. How does this account protect the argument from a crude interchangeability of all things?

218. Which distinction clarifies the use of rainwater in the earlier demonstration?

219. Where might the terms universal and particular shift their scale within a passage?

220. How would you explain the chapter’s main distinction to a reader familiar only with ordinary seed?

Book I Chapter 21 the Generation of Animals

Read with: I.21.

221. What distinguishes an animal’s particular generation from the production of universal seed?

222. How do nourishment and transformation connect an animal to the other kingdoms?

223. What role is assigned to volatile and fixed principles in a living form?

224. How does the author relate an animal’s structure to the principles from which it arises?

225. What happens to those relations when the animal dies?

226. Why might the same material have different significance before and after assimilation?

227. How are reproductive images used as explanations of more general processes?

228. Which claims in the chapter are supported by familiar observation?

229. Which claims require a theory that exceeds those observations?

230. How does the discussion prepare the comparison with plant generation?

Book I Chapter 22 the Generation of Plants

Read with: I.22.

231. Why does the author call the root a vegetable magnet?

232. How do soil, rain and the plant’s own structure cooperate in nourishment?

233. What is shared among root, stem, leaves and flowers, and what differs in their roles?

234. How does the chapter connect plant growth with the return of animal excrement to the soil?

235. What makes the vegetable kingdom intermediate between minerals and animals?

236. How does the analysis of a plant distinguish volatile, acid, oil and fixed portions?

237. Why does the author require intermediate principles when attempting to reunite what has been separated?

238. What does the chapter reveal about the author’s attitude toward costly or frustrating practice?

239. How do his claims of experience differ from his general claims about all plants?

240. Which part of this long chapter most clearly connects a familiar act of cultivation with the larger philosophy?

Book I Chapter 23 the Generation of Minerals

Read with: I.23.

241. How does the mineral-generation tree organise the passage from spirit to glass?

242. What is the difference between the remote origin and proximate matter of a metal?

243. Why does the author give Gur a place in the sequence?

244. How do vitriol, sulphur, arsenic and marcasite function as intermediate stages?