Life and sensation

Use in the book

The audible-Word discussion attributes life and sensation to the already created waters and elements (p. 68, II.068.1). They can see God and hear his voice to the extent required by the argument. The supporting passages describe living water and the responses of waters and earth to divine presence (p. 69, II.069.1). Sensation is not merely an ornamental adjective here: it answers an objection that no hearer existed.

Animals and plants receive a different kind of life. Particular creative commands establish their living kinds, implanted order and reproduction through their own seed (pp. 130-131, II.130.2). The author does not claim that the operator can give elements this activity at will (p. 131, II.131.1). Elemental responsiveness and the specific life of a propagating creature therefore remain distinguishable.²⁸

Minerals supply a third formulation (pp. 132-133, II.132.1). The quotation attributed to Nuysement denies sensitive and vegetative faculties while affirming essential life. The author uses this to argue that mineral generation needs no separately implanted seed equivalent to those of plants and animals. Life is explicitly qualified; it is not treated as proof that minerals feel as animals do or reproduce by an ordinary species seed.

Ordinary gold is nevertheless called lifeless in the argument against its supposed killing and regeneration (pp. 144-145, II.144.1). Where life is absent, killing cannot occur, since deprivation presupposes possession. The operative contrast is between a dead finished metal and the living philosophical material required by the art. This should be placed beside, rather than silently equated with, the broader formula essential life of minerals.

The Second Letter gives light life through the Word (p. 211, II.211.1). If the creative Word became the life of creatures, it became the life of light; life then supports form and substance. This is the reply’s argument against the first correspondent’s account of light as an inhering accident. Life is functioning in a theological and constitutive inference rather than in a report of light’s reproduction.

These passages show why a simple list of living things would misrepresent the work. The relevant questions are whether a thing responds, propagates, has a determinate constitutive principle or can participate in the philosophical operation. The different predicates may be connected by the continuing Word, but the source does not present one exhaustive definition that removes every local difference.

Places to read

1. Part II · II.068.1; II.069.12Elemental response and the audibility objection.
2. Part II · II.130.2; II.131.1; II.132.123Specific life, human limits and mineral essential life.
3. Part II · II.144.1; II.211.12Dead ordinary gold and the reply’s life of light.

Translation

Sensitive and vegetative faculties retain the source’s categories in the Nuysement quotation. Essential life is not translated as conscious life. Conversely, sensation remains sensation where the author expressly uses it to defend elemental hearing.

Dead and living in the gold discussion should remain operative descriptions within the author’s matter theory. Reducing them automatically to poisonous and wholesome or inorganic and organic would change the opposition.

Connections

Living water follows the scriptural phrase, Gold living follows the operative material, and Soul propagation follows the special account of human generation. Capacity and potency helps distinguish a possessed ability from its actual exercise. These routes prevent one use of life from proving every other use.

Cautions

The potentially difficult relation between essential mineral life and lifeless ordinary gold should remain visible. The local contrasts suggest different respects, but this entry does not invent a complete doctrine that the author never states.

These historical predicates are not modern demonstrations of consciousness in elements or light. Their argumentative roles can be explained without validating the conclusions.

Leben und Sinnligkeit

Leben und Sinnligkeit — Verbatim source expression, with the normalized headword distinguished. II.068.1.

vitâ tantum vivunt essentiali

vitâ tantum vivunt essentiali — Verbatim source expression, with the normalized headword distinguished. II.132.1.

kein Leben

kein Leben — Verbatim source expression, with the normalized headword distinguished. II.144.1.

lucis vita

lucis vita — Verbatim source expression, with the normalized headword distinguished. II.211.1.