Element

Use in the book

The anthology places doctrines of principles and elements together before discussing matter. Reports on blending treat elements as constituents of compounds. The account of aether distinguishes a fifth celestial element from earth, water, air, and fire.

Places to read

1. I.10.headingPrinciples and elements are the chapter’s paired subjects.
2. I.17.1.1Blends are described as mixtures of elements through alteration.
3. I.40.1.5Aether is distinguished from the four elements.

Translation in this edition

“Element” retains the ancient compositional vocabulary. Its constituents should be understood from the report itself, rather than identified with the elements of the modern periodic table.

Use in the book

Water and fire are contrasted as elements that leave differently shaped lands through their different operations. The cycle of rain and vapor maintains moisture and is extended to other elements. To inhabit a pure element, however, can describe a writer’s medium; to plunge into one’s element is part of an inward maxim paired with sphere and center. Joy is also an element of social concord. Physical constituent, congenial medium, and contributory part remain distinguishable.

Places to read

1. I, p. 61, entry 4, ¶2Different elements are inferred from different landscape forms.
2. I, p. 172, entry 4, ¶1Circulation preserves the quantity of an element.
3. II, p. 808, entry 5, ¶1One’s element joins sphere and center as an image of inward return.
4. II, p. 913, entry 4, ¶1Shared joy contributes to concord.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the common word element while allowing each comparison to specify its meaning. These natural elements are not automatically entries in the modern periodic table.

Use in the book

The elements appear among the subjects opened to the narrator at university. Their significance lies in becoming parts of a world whose hidden structure can be understood and enjoyed. The subsequent description of natural philosophy names earth, air, water, and fire alongside other corporeal things and makes inquiry into them serve a higher end: preparing the enjoyer’s sight. The book values knowledge of material causes without treating that knowledge alone as the completion of wisdom.

Places to read

1. III.36The elements enter the account of a university education later related to felicity.
2. III.44Natural philosophy investigates corporeal things and prepares the eyes of the enjoyer.

In this edition

Do not automatically give “elements” its modern chemical sense. Traherne is using a historical philosophical vocabulary and does not present a periodic classification of substances.

Use in the book

The classification is indispensable for following the witnesses but should not replace the distinction between their language and the quoted poetry. At A28 Simplicius sets four bodily elements beside Love and Strife, called principles “properly” so, and arrives at six principles. At A37 Aristotle treats the four as matter while crediting Empedocles with dividing the moving cause into opposites. Thus one term participates in two arrangements: it distinguishes constituents from movers, and it assigns those constituents a place in Aristotelian causal analysis.

Even the number four does not pass unchallenged. Aristotle argues at A36–372 that Empedocles effectively opposes fire to the other three taken together. That is an assessment of explanatory practice, not evidence that Empedocles explicitly recanted the fourfold enumeration. Aëtius goes in another direction at A43, positing smaller “elements of the elements.” Such notices cannot simply be combined into a secure hierarchy running from atoms to roots to compounds.

Places to read

1. A 28 (testimony)Simplicius, Physics 25,21, from Theophrastus. Names four corporeal elements and distinguishes them from the moving principles.
2. A 37 (polemical)Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 985a21. Interprets the four as matter, while arguing that their actual use reduces them to two.
3. A 43 (testimony)Aëtius I 13,1 and I 17,3. Extends element-language to hypothetical constituents below the four.

Translation in this edition

The edition expressly warns that στοιχεῖα is not Empedocles’ poetic designation. Its “first to discover the four elements” narrative should therefore be understood as ancient classification and reception, not an unmediated self-description.

Use in the book

Earth, water, air, and fire belong to the lower cosmic spheres. The crucial distinction is between an entire elemental sphere and a detached particle or mixture. Objections that elements are inferior because they serve composite bodies miss, Ficino argues, the purpose of their wholes: complete spheres serve the world itself, whereas separated particles are mixed for the sake of particular bodies. The wholes also mediate divine and celestial influences before these descend to mixed bodies. A sphere's common soul must therefore be distinguished from the souls of creatures living within it. IV.1.36 adds the four elemental spheres to eight heavens, explaining the later total of twelve cosmic spheres; eight and twelve are not inconsistent counts of the same category. Descriptions of their location, purity, and animacy are part of the stated cosmology, rather than current scientific classification. The text's distinction between whole and particle does important argumentative work throughout.

Further passage references. IV.1.35–IV.1.392345; IV.1.50; IV.1.89–IV.1.932345

Places to read

1. IV.1.36Air and fire receive the same animating argument as earth and water, alongside eight heavens.
2. IV.1.89–9123The objection about inferiority is answered by distinguishing the cosmic whole from mixed particles.
3. IV.1.96Twelve sphere-souls are distinguished from one world-soul and many souls within spheres.

Translation in this edition

Eight heavens and twelve total spheres are compatible counts because the four elemental spheres are added. “Complete elements” should not be replaced by every small sample of earth or water; the whole/particle distinction is the response to the objection.

aer / aqua / terra

aer / aqua / terra. Printed forms: aer; aere; aerem; aqua; aquam; aquamve; terra.

Air / water / earth. Elemental mediation joins unlike extremes through shared qualities; the historical physical account supplies the example, not modern chemical elements. References: III.2.6, III.2.8. See Elements and their spheres.

pondus / librare

pondus / librare. Printed forms: librata; ponderibus.

Weight / balance or poise. Without higher governance, the elements are imagined separately balanced by their weights and places rather than mingling into an ordered whole. References: II.13.4. See Elements and their spheres.

Air (cosmic names)

Air (aere). Context in the Orphic catalogue: knowing power Jupiter; life-giving and governing power Juno. IV.1.94. See Bacchus and the Muses; Elements and their spheres.

Earth (cosmic names)

Earth (elemento terrae). Context in the Orphic catalogue: knowing power Pluto; life-giving and governing power Proserpina. IV.1.94. See Bacchus and the Muses; Earth soul; Elements and their spheres.

Fire (cosmic names)

Fire (igne). Context in the Orphic catalogue: knowing power Phanetas; life-giving and governing power Aurora. IV.1.94. See Bacchus and the Muses; Elements and their spheres.

Water (cosmic names)

Water (aqua). Context in the Orphic catalogue: knowing power Oceanus; life-giving and governing power Thetis. IV.1.94. See Bacchus and the Muses; Elements and their spheres.