Letter and spirit

Use in the book

Pages 109–1102 construct a compact chain of authorities against literalism. Rhazes is cited for attending to what is signified by likeness rather than the surface. The Turba says that Philosophers set down many things they do not do. The Liber Saturni confines books to sons who understand their sayings and warns that following the letter in operations wastes riches and time. Avicenna is then made to recover the truth of the Art by returning to natural principles. The scriptural sentence that the letter kills and the Spirit gives life draws these examples into Khunrath's own explanatory register.

This is not a warrant to discard inconvenient authors. Page 110 explicitly lets their books stand good, in a Nature-conforming understanding and insofar as they agree with Nature. The analogy with theology continues onto page 111: the Fathers' writings are accepted as authentic where they agree with biblical Scripture. Each corpus is read under a governing standard. The practical concern is acute: the wrong interpretation costs labour and money, and may make a merely specified preparation appear to be the universal matter.

Khunrath supplies a worked example on pages 112–1132. A statement about metals may concern philosophical metals hidden in Magnesia, the use of silver or gold for a specified Stone, or first matter considered pri-materially. It need not mean that common hard metals yield the universal matter by themselves. Such discriminations interpret a sentence within its possible object and end. They answer both the apparent conflict of authorities and the reader's temptation to turn every similar word into a material identification. The letter becomes misleading when a shared name is mistaken for a shared state or function.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 109A chain of authorities recommends natural possibility and signification by likeness rather than bare verbal sound.
2. 1599 p. 110The Liber Saturni, Avicenna, and the letter–Spirit formula make literal operation a cause of loss.
3. 1599 p. 111The analogy with Scripture completes the condition under which authorities are held authentic.
4. 1599 p. 112Nature's touchstone replaces merely paper-and-book-conforming reading and opens the example of philosophical metals.
5. 1599 p. 113The example distinguishes specified-Stone work from a reference to first matter itself.

Translation in this edition

The translation's dead and seducing letter retains the source's evaluative force. It would be misleading to paraphrase this as a contrast between 'literal science' and 'spiritual symbolism': the interpretive test explicitly includes the material states and possible operations of the Art. Spirit and careful distinction cooperate here.