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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Reading language

The Third Operation and the Resurrection

By the third operation, that is, the Resurrection of the King or of sulfur, the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself is allegorically figured

All the doctors and masters of the Hebrews have declared that the seeds of the idea of immortality and glorification were scattered throughout things. From this they inferred the resurrection of Jesus Christ and of bodies, which has been confirmed not only by his death but by the experience of things that must be made radiant. They had such great testimony of it and left so many proofs that to oppose it would be to resist truth itself. It is certainly astonishing to find, in the very spoils of death and the remnants of corruption, seeds of a new and better life that proliferate and germinate, so that death and corruption, after devouring and destroying the heterogeneities of corruptible qualities,

then afford the occasion for an immortal and incorruptible life. For through death bodies remain invulnerable to the assaults of the elements and incapable of being killed by their violence. This leads some to maintain that spirits, otherwise incorruptible, emerge from corruption after having long contracted an impure association with the envelopes of matter. The whole secret of natural philosophy consists in this: corruption and death serve to spiritualize, essentialize, and, so to speak, glorify things. For all philosophers teach that what does not know the laws of corruption and destruction cannot fulfill the duties of generation. Since certain bodies, namely metals and minerals, are difficult to corrupt and destroy, no renewal or generation should be asked or expected of them unless they are corrupted and die, owing to the purity, spirituality, and homogeneity of their parts. It follows that everything fallen from this uniformity of substances, and composed

of different parts, readily falls apart and becomes corrupted, so that their life is rather death, or a disposition toward death rather than life; whereas the death of the former bodies is always the principle of a new or better life. For this reason, when demonstrating the successive movement of life and death and their linkage, the ancients depicted a serpent devouring itself—that is, its tail—as the poet explains: ‘We die in being born, and our life depends on our death.’

Nature has established this not only to perpetuate the succession of things, but also to give humanity knowledge of death, because a human being becomes more perfect, happier, and incorruptible after this passing and corruptible life. So that these benefits of renewal, generation, radiance, and glorification might take place in things here below, nature has given them an immortal seed, through which, when the corruption of the matter in which it resides

occurs, it renews, regenerates, and glorifies itself.

Who has ever attentively considered this first flower and germ of life, in which the form of the compound is contained? Who has sought to discover the place it occupies within the compound? Although the weakness of the mind does not permit it, since philosophers alone can possess this knowledge, we shall nevertheless try to make it known to everyone, so that the ignorant, the pagan, and the unbeliever, as well as the Christian, may acknowledge that the foundations and supports of this truth are so firm that Heaven itself would fall and the whole mechanism of the world would sooner be destroyed than it could waver or be moved in the slightest.

I hear certain people raging and crying out against me that this is new and unheard-of; that it has never been discussed or approved by anyone; that, on the contrary, it has been disapproved as unfitting for a Christian to mingle the sacred with the profane. They would even stubbornly deny that the sacred can be indicated and shown through the

profane. I say more: they will condemn me and overwhelm me with insults and mockery. Their retorts and their sickly stomach, filled with common food fit only for the dregs of the people to the point of nausea, will find no taste for this food and reject it as too raw, too solid, and ill suited to their constitution. But that does not concern me. Let them test whether any divine or human law forbids seeking to know the worker through his labor, the Creator through his work, or the one who has begotten through his creature; whether seeking to ascend to knowledge of God through nature is a crime deserving such loud cries. What does nature herself show us but the true and royal road by which we ascend to him, so that, having known him in our mortal manner, we may love, honor, and glorify him with all our strength and all the power of our mind? They would do far better to be silent and apply their minds, however little, to these things

than to waste so much time muttering ridiculous formularies, certain prayers and meditations; for they would have more pleasure and consolation in a single moment than by growing old in their meditations. These people surely resemble the fox in the fable, scorning grapes they cannot reach; and, more unfortunate than Tantalus, they seek water amid waters and run after fruits that escape them.

If they had at least once felt and tasted things above what I describe, being more penetrating, they would discover that the seeds of immortality and incorruptibility flow from a source other than the universal spirit, to which alone it belongs to marry the elements by a bond of eternal union; or the things to be generated would receive these benefits from Heaven for themselves. We shall try, as far as possible, to explain why this universal spirit is appointed by nature

to be their father and fashioner. In this elementary family it is like the son of Heaven, whose functions it performs. It is a magnet and an attraction that draws seminal forms into compounds and certainly retains them there as long as it resides in a compound in this manner. These ideas of forms await some disposition before entering compounds, and are formed and specified in different ways according to that attributed to the spirit or heat of our quintessence, because it effects the different degrees of their mixture. It may truly and rightly be called their father and guardian. Everything, therefore, that has become fitted to receive them is designated by the name of this spiritual essence: the purer the parts of a compound, the more they are joined by a strong bond of union; and the more united they are, the closer they approach purity, spirituality, and incorruptibility.

There is there a nobler, greater, and more vegetative life; there is there a germinative spirit more

powerful and in greater quantity. Since purity of parts, homogeneity, and incorruptibility are greater in metals than in all other things, they have more germinative spirit than everything else. They are therefore the central center, from which it spreads over everything, as we shall explain in its place.

Everything in the sperms and these seeds flows from this universal source and can flow from no other, however different it may be, whether in plants or animals. Although nature has established its own dwelling in animal sperm and vegetable seeds, the parts of other bodies are not thereby deprived of it; otherwise they could neither be nourished nor increase, as in transplanted trees. Because it causes their germination, it is also the principle of their nutrition. Now nutrition is nothing other than generation extended and amplified. If we examine how it takes place in them, it

336.The appeal to the doctors and masters of the Hebrews is the author’s collective attribution; no individual text or teacher is identified here.

337.Spermes means seeds in this account of the idea’s diffusion through nature. ‘Heterogeneities’ retains the technical plurality: the unlike constituents or qualities are what corruption is said to destroy.

338.Tués, ‘killed’, is the clarified reading in the original. The claim is that death’s purification leaves bodies invulnerable to the assaults and violence of the elements.

339.Essencifier, like essentifier earlier, is rendered ‘essentialize’: corruption removes the unlike constituents and allows a more unified condition to emerge. The text calls this glorification only with the qualification ‘so to speak’.

340.Ceux-là refers back to the more uniform bodies whose death has been presented as a condition of renewal. The comparison contrasts a precarious present life with death as the beginning of a better one.

341.The self-devouring serpent is explained by the author himself as the linkage of life and death. The following saying is attributed only to ‘the poet’; no name or work is supplied here.

342.The source both reserves knowledge to philosophers and announces an attempt to make it known to everyone. The translation keeps this tension in the argument for a stable natural foundation of the claim.

343.The objection concerns the author’s method of demonstrating sacred matters through profane or natural things. Its reply continues directly on the next page; ‘profane’ here belongs to that stated distinction.

344.The polemic combines retorts with a cacochyme, or sickly, stomach. The grammatical sequence changes number, but the image is one of readers unable to digest the author’s stronger intellectual food.

345.The royal road is explicitly knowledge of the Creator through created nature. The author also limits this knowledge to ‘our mortal manner’; the translation preserves that qualification.

346.The author supplies the relevant actions in both comparisons: the fox despises inaccessible grapes, while Tantalus cannot obtain the water and fruit around him. They accuse the opponents of belittling what they cannot attain.

347.The phrase d’une autre source que de l’esprit universel asserts ‘a source other than the universal spirit’, even though the following clause gives that spirit the unique office of uniting elements. The apparent tension is retained; no negative is inserted to reverse the comparison.

348.The universal spirit is called father and fashioner of the things discussed and son of Heaven because it performs Heaven’s functions within the elementary family. The kinship terms define its mediating office.

349.The spirit’s magnetic role is both attraction and retention of seminal forms. Its heat governs degrees of mixture, while the receiving compound requires a suitable disposition.

350.Centre central is deliberately emphatic and is retained as ‘central center’. The manuscript assigns metals a special position because of their asserted purity, homogeneity, and concentration of germinative spirit.

351.Nutrition is expressly defined as generation extended and amplified. The reference to transplanted trees supports the claim that generative power belongs to bodily parts beyond the separate seed.