DiotimosReading Desk

Argument

The three kingdoms and essential unity

The kingdoms are animal, vegetable and mineral nature. Essential unity concerns their common foundation; accidental difference concerns their attributes and degrees of perfection.

From the book

Centrum Naturae Concentratum

Attributed to Ali Puli · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordThe kingdoms are animal, vegetable and mineral nature. Essential unity concerns their common foundation; accidental difference concerns their attributes and degrees of perfection.
  • In the bookAn opinion attributed to the learned is tested against medical practice, nourishment and cross-kingdom examples. The narrator’s conclusion unites the kingdoms without making every material equally fit for every purpose.
  • In this edition“Accidental” is philosophical language, not “random”. The words “because they believe” mark an opponent’s view rather than the narrator’s own conclusion.
  • A place to readThe Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 23–The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 26: follow the movement from the reported objection to the narrator’s account of one root.

Meaning

The three kingdoms are the animal, vegetable and mineral divisions of nature. The narrator does not deny their observable differences. He denies that these differences establish separate fundamental essences. Essential sameness and accidental difference are the paired terms of that argument.

The decisive pair is essentialiter and Accidentaliter in The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31. The first says how the kingdoms are one; the second says how they differ. The added phrase ratione majoris & minoris perfectionis specifies greater and lesser perfection as the respect in which the difference is considered. Thus a reader should neither erase the divisions nor turn them into wholly separate natures. The dispute concerns what explains their differences and what kinds of relation those differences permit.

Use in the book

The account begins by giving the learned opponents their reason: gold must be made through gold or solar matter, they say, and a thing can be improved only by its like. They therefore exclude animal, vegetable and aerial powers from metallic exaltation. The turn in The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 24 is the narrator’s answer, not a continuation of their position. One root, he argues, grows and sustains everything; different matrices and movements account for thickness, taste, hardness and kind. What the opponents had treated as a barrier between fundamental natures is redescribed as diversity within a common foundation. Following that change of speaker-position is essential before reading the examples that follow (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 23–The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 24).

The medical argument then turns the doctors’ practice against their theory. They give mineral and metallic medicines to human beings, who belong to the animal kingdom. The narrator defines recovery as the correction of degenerated spirits and argues that such correction requires the correcting essence to unite radically with its recipient. If that union occurs, he concludes, animal and mineral essences cannot be fundamentally alien. The necessity belongs to his stated reasoning; neither the premise about treatment nor the asserted efficacy is a modern clinical finding. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 26.)

A series of cross-kingdom examples follows: animal materials acting on minerals, plant-derived materials acting on metals, the transformation of food into animal products, the feeding of plants from animal waste, and mineral-like stones within bodies. These examples have different evidential statuses—common experience, attributed practice, reported marvel and first-person claim. They should not be collapsed into a uniformly verified experimental dataset. Their argumentative function is to make the supposedly impermeable boundaries untenable. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 27, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 28, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 29, The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 30.)

The summary makes the qualification explicit: the kingdoms are essentially one and differ accidentally with respect to greater and lesser perfection. This is a hierarchical unity, not a claim that every material is practically equivalent. Salt is present throughout, but its particular condition and power differ. The choice of an appropriate source for the masterpiece remains necessary precisely because accidental differences matter in practice. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31.)

Nor does the common root grant unlimited novelty. Between the universal-power declaration and the medical argument the narrator says that the salt-spirit now sustains the works established by divine creation. The unity thesis should be read alongside that restriction rather than as a licence for generating any possible form at will. (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 25.)

Places to read

  1. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 23German“weil sie meynen” The doctrine of fundamentally separate kingdoms is attributed to the learned opponents.
  2. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 23German“der 3. Reiche” The classification provides the disputed boundaries.
  3. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 24German“die unterschiedene Matrix und Bewegung” The narrator substitutes difference of formation for difference of root.
  4. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 25German“kan er doch nun nichts neues mehr zu wege bringen” Universal natural power is limited to sustaining created works.
  5. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 26German“im Natur-Grunde eines Wesens” The conclusion of the medical argument is common fundamental being.
  6. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 27German“durch ein Animalisch Fett” One brief indication of the animal–mineral examples, without reproducing an operation.
  7. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 28German“so viel mir bekandt” A first-person limitation qualifies one of the narrator’s technical claims.
  8. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 29German“Vegetabilischen und Animalischen Safften” Nutrition supplies an everyday basis for the crossing of categories.
  9. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 30German“Ich selbst, durch GOttes Gnade” The culmination shifts to the narrator’s personal claim.
  10. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31German“Animalia, Vegetabilia und Mineralia essentialiter einerley” The positive assertion of essential sameness.
  11. The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31German“nur Accidentaliter ratione majoris & minoris perfectionis” The differentiating qualification concerns degrees of perfection.

Translation in this edition

“Accidental” is philosophical language for differences in attributes, not a claim that the kingdoms arise by chance. The translation preserves the argument’s universal force while attributing it to the historical speaker. Individual material names in the examples are not converted into precise modern chemical identifications, and their operational details are not reproduced here.

In The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 23, “because they believe” translates weil sie meynen. It introduces the reason assigned to the learned opponents, not an editorial assertion that the three kingdoms really have unrelated foundations.

“of one substance in nature’s foundation” expresses the medical argument’s conclusion (The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 26). It should remain a conclusion drawn within the narrator’s reasoning. Calling the medicines effective without that attribution would turn an historical premise into a modern claim that the translation itself does not establish.

Printed forms

3. Reiche

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 23 — 1682 pp. 21–22. “der 3. Reiche”

The three kingdoms of animals, plants and minerals whose fundamental separation the narrator disputes.

Animalia

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31 — 1682 pp. 25–26. “Animalia, Vegetabilia und Mineralia”

Animals or the animal domain, one of three differentiated natural kingdoms.

Vegetabilia

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31 — 1682 pp. 25–26. “Animalia, Vegetabilia und Mineralia”

Plants or the vegetable domain, sharing the same underlying natural foundation.

Mineralia

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31 — 1682 pp. 25–26. “Animalia, Vegetabilia und Mineralia”

Minerals or the mineral domain, including the metallic cases discussed in the argument.

essentialiter

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31 — 1682 pp. 25–26. “essentialiter einerley”

Essentially: the respect in which the three kingdoms are declared the same.

Accidentaliter

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 31 — 1682 pp. 25–26. “nur Accidentaliter ratione majoris & minoris perfectionis”

Accidentally: different in attributes and degrees of perfection rather than underlying essence.

Natur-Grunde

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 26 — 1682 pp. 22–23. “im Natur-Grunde eines Wesens”

The foundation of nature in which the kingdoms are said to have one being.

Matrix

Attested: The Concentrated Centre of Nature · Passage 24 — 1682 p. 22. “die unterschiedene Matrix und Bewegung”

A formative matrix or receptive setting which, with movement, accounts for difference.

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