From the book
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordNatural motion enters the parenthesis describing Nature's continuing work after the world's first creation.
- In KhunrathAt p. 47 Khunrath distinguishes what God made from first matter at the world's beginning from later plants and animals arising through their own seeds.
- In this editionThe Latin retains principio in the parenthetical construction.
- A reading distinctionThe phrase is singly attested in this passage; it should not be expanded into a comprehensive mechanics absent from the treatise.
Meaning
Natural motion enters the parenthesis describing Nature's continuing work after the world's first creation. The phrase belongs to generation and propagation, not merely to changes of physical position.
Use in the book
At p. 47 Khunrath distinguishes what God made from first matter at the world's beginning from later plants and animals arising through their own seeds. The parenthesis joins God's willing, Nature's working and the principle of natural motion. The sequence continues on p. 48 into the specific powers responsible for mineral and metallic generation.
The phrase helps preserve two different kinds of explanation. God remains the source and governor of the order, while Nature continually effects particular generations within it. Motion does not mean that the original creation must be performed anew whenever a plant or animal comes to be.
Khunrath does not develop an independent taxonomy of motion here. The adjacent account supplies the operative meaning: ongoing, ordered becoming according to kind. Its relevance to Magnesia lies in the contrast between that specification and the catholic condition of the chosen subject.
Places to read
- 1599 p. 47Natural motion is named in the parenthesis governing subsequent propagation.
- 1599 p. 48The account continues with seed-properties and mineral or metallic formative powers.
Translation in this edition
The Latin retains principio in the parenthetical construction. The supplied English reads it as “by the principle of Natural Motion”; no additional named philosophical authority is cited at this point.
Source note
The phrase is singly attested in this passage; it should not be expanded into a comprehensive mechanics absent from the treatise.