Omnia

Use in the book

The passage is embedded in a warning about interpretive flexibility. Written law is said to have a wax nose which can be turned at will; the writings about Chaos or Magnesia seem equally capable of being made to fit every matter in the world. Khunrath does not answer by denying the extraordinary range of predication. He explains it: the universal subject can be called all things because of what proceeds from it.

Two directions must therefore be kept apart. If all material things have their beginning in Magnesia, many descriptions may truthfully converge upon that one subject. It does not follow that every subject to which one of those descriptions can be bent is itself Magnesia. The surrounding argument makes Nature's possibility, rather than the bare letter, the standard of interpretation. Omnia magnifies the need for that standard.

Earlier pages supply the material basis. The universal first matter precedes the differentiation of natural kinds, and the numerical description gathers one, two, three and four into a single natural subject. The p. 55 margin's movement from one to all and toward one belongs with this account, though it is not a second explicit statement that Omnia is the matter's name. The common origin and comprehensive constitution make the later name intelligible.

The opening requirement that Magnesia contain everything needed for the universal Stone is related but not identical. That claim concerns constitutive sufficiency for the work, whereas p. 111 concerns the range of predication and the origin of all material things. Keeping those claims distinct prevents the name from becoming an empty synonym for totality. It also prevents converting “all things” into permission to add arbitrary materials. The book's universal subject is one natural thing, and its multiple names never annul that restriction.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 45The subject contains all it needs for the universal Stone, a constitutive claim continued on p. 46.
2. 1599 p. 47All material things derive from the first matter before their differentiation.
3. 1599 p. 54The numerical plurality is present in one natural subject.
4. 1599 p. 55 · margin2The movement from one to all and toward one anticipates the logic of the name.
5. 1599 p. 111Universal predication explains Omnia while exposing interpretive abuse.
6. 1599 p. 111 · marginOMNIA appears as the concise marginal headword.

Translation in this edition

The primary text ascribes the name to the Philosophers rather than claiming Khunrath invented it. The modern note's description of the argument as grammatical usefully highlights predication; the article also preserves the stated material reason for that grammar.