Four elements

Use in the book

At p. 54 the elemental list completes the numerical unfolding begun with one crude Mercury. The pair and the triad do not disappear when the four are named. All remain in one natural subject, and the four are explicitly ensouled. They therefore provide another analysis of Magnesia's constitution, not a command to assemble four separately handled ingredients. The primary margin's Tetractys and its Latin equivalents relate this fourfold account to the number-language completed by the Denarius on the following page.

The objection from Bernard at pp. 64–652 supplies the negative limit. Khunrath anticipates an appeal to the Count's attack on bare elements as first matter and says it does not refute his Magnesia. He is not maintaining the view Bernard rejected. Instead, he cites the account of crude Mercury as a subject upon which Nature has already worked a little, composing and shaping it into a catholic mass. The subject has a definite outward form and remains imperfect, but is not a metal or mineral.

The distinction between a naturally composed whole and its analytic constituents is therefore indispensable. “Contains four elements” cannot be reversed into “any mixture of four elements is the due subject.” The ordering, animation and catholic condition have already been supplied by Nature. That is why the Artist begins from the thing rather than from a bare inventory of elementary names.

Elsewhere the text also distinguishes elemental fire from the essential fire associated with loosening metallic bodies. Such usages warn against making every occurrence of earth, water, air or fire an identical technical constituent. In particular, the pri-material water of Magnesia carries functions not established by the bare fact that common water is one of the four elements. The elemental account must be read within the larger demonstration rather than treated as its replacement.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 54Earth, water, air and fire are ensouled with fifth essence in one subject.
2. 1599 p. 54 · marginTetractys and the quaternary names identify the numerical place of the elements.
3. 1599 p. 55The Denarius follows the numerical account as the artfully attained physical perfection.
4. 1599 p. 64The anticipated objection invokes Bernard’s dispute against bare elements, continued on p. 65.
5. 1599 p. 65Nature’s composition of crude Mercury explains why that objection does not answer Khunrath.
6. 1599 p. 69Elemental fire is distinguished from an essential fire in the account of corporeal Mercuries.

Translation in this edition

The English preserves the four familiar element-names rather than converting them into a modern list of substances or states. “Bare” is decisive in the Bernard objection: Khunrath's reply concerns the absence of the appropriate natural composition and condition, not a denial that his subject includes four elements.