Nature’s manner · Lexicon

From the book

Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordNature's stylus is her manner of proceeding.
In KhunrathThe expression belongs to a sentence extending from the account of the universal laboratory to metallic generation inside the earth.
In this edition“Manner” is the supplied English sense.
A reading distinctionThe modern note to p. 63 distinguishes this older sense of stylus from a written hand; the primary sentence’s repeated generation verbs establish the local context.

Meaning

Nature's stylus is her manner of proceeding. At p. 63 the Latin ablative stylo qualifies the unchangeable way in which she has generated and continues to generate metals.

Use in the book

The expression belongs to a sentence extending from the account of the universal laboratory to metallic generation inside the earth. Nature's past and present work follow the same manner. The Artist is therefore asked to recognize an existing order rather than invent a new material route according to personal preference.

An earlier formulation at p. 51 describes Nature's ordinary course in nearly the same relation: she has always begotten metals from the universal matter and still does so. Together the passages give the book's appeals to Nature a temporal consistency. The required beginning is not merely a past accident whose later products can be reconstructed arbitrarily.

The word does not here mean literary style, even though Nature is elsewhere imagined as the writer of a world-book. Its immediate object is generation. Keeping that local meaning prevents the two images, natural working and natural writing, from being confused.

Places to read

1599 p. 51Nature’s ordinary course governs the generation of all metals.
1599 p. 63Her unchangeable stylus joins past and present generation, completed on p. 64.

Translation in this edition

“Manner” is the supplied English sense. The nominative stylus is useful for lookup, while the original form in this passage is stylo.

Source note

The modern note to p. 63 distinguishes this older sense of stylus from a written hand; the primary sentence’s repeated generation verbs establish the local context.