From the book
The Summary of Physics Restored
Attributed to Jean d’Espagnet · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordTinctures, smells, and tastes are called signs disclosing inward powers. A signature is an impressed formative mark, not merely a written personal name.
- In the bookThe argument links perceptible differences with hidden causes and then with the dependence of lower natures upon heavenly exemplars. Signs reveal powers without becoming their efficient causes.
- In this editionTincturæ can mean colourings or tinctures. The edition preserves the breadth rather than making the term a single laboratory product or reducing it simply to colour.
- A place to readCanon 211 should be read after 210 on qualities as instruments, and with 226 on the hidden seals transmitted from higher to lower nature.
Meaning
Signum is a sign; sigillum a seal; signatura the impressed marking or signature. Their shared imagery connects the identification of a thing with the power that forms it. Tinctura contributes a neighbouring image of colouring or penetration. The words are not perfectly interchangeable: a seal can describe transmitted form, a signature disclose a hidden nature, and a tincture suggest a power distributed through matter. Smell and taste anchor the argument in sensible encounters even when its explanation passes beyond what the senses directly examine.
Use in the book
Canon 166 says that species-forms were marked in the first individuals with the character of the ideal Archetype, and that this seal passes to descendants through generation. The claim establishes a vocabulary of enduring pattern. Canon 167 then distinguishes agencies: bodies generate; form moves organs, disposes seminal matter, encloses a life-spark, and impresses its character upon the spirit within seed. A reference to a seal must not quietly turn form itself into a bodily generator or a modern inherited molecule.
The immediate approach to canon 211 is more polemical. Canon 210 denies that qualities alone are efficient causes. In plants and herbs active powers lie within their essence, made rich in spirits; qualities serve as instruments of action and reception. When the next canon addresses tinctures, smells, and tastes, it therefore asks how sensible features relate to that inward efficacy. They are not dismissed as useless appearances. Nature has endowed things fittingly with these particular spiritual gifts.
The crucial sentence refuses to treat them merely as ornament or as externally adhering accidents. They have an implanted, radical cause and are to be called not so much accidents as revealing signs of inner powers. The construction is comparative: the author redirects explanatory emphasis from external accompaniment to inward significance. He does not provide a general catalogue in which each colour, odour, or flavour decodes a particular remedy. Nothing in this canon authorises a present inference that an unknown plant is safe to consume because of its appearance or taste.
Canon 219 later calls radical balsam an indelible and multiplying tincture penetrating even excrements. That is not simply another occurrence of “colour” in the same sensory sense. It describes a persistent formative or generative impregnation. Reading 211 and 219 together shows why a lexical article needs the local predicates instead of a single rigid gloss for tinctura. The former speaks of perceptible gifts as signs; the latter of a power permeating the whole compound.
Canon 226 gives the signatures a cosmic orientation. The first exemplars are engraved in heavenly natures, more perfect there because of finer matter and proximity to eternity. Lower things are copies in coarser material. Each lower species bears a hidden seal and signature of a corresponding higher nature and acknowledges its rule. This supports the author's account of dependence and likeness; it does not eliminate the difference between exemplar and copy. A sign therefore joins levels without making its bearer the source of its own power. The sensory sign, the specific mark in generation, and the heavenly signature belong to a coherent family of images, but each has a different immediate explanatory task.
Places to read
- Canon 166; 1653, pp. 117, 118LatinThe Archetype's seal on species and its transmission through generations.
- Canon 167; 1653, p. 118LatinForm impresses character while bodies properly generate.
- Canon 210; 1653, pp. 152, 153LatinQualities as instruments, not efficient causes.
- Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154LatinTinctures, smells, and tastes as revealing signs of inward powers.
- Canon 219; 1653, p. 158LatinTincture as a persistent multiplying impregnation rather than only visible colour.
- Canon 226; 1653, pp. 164, 165LatinLower copies bear the seal and signature of corresponding heavenly natures.
Translation in this edition
In 211 “particular and spiritual gifts” follows specialia and spiritualia qualifying dona; “revealing signs” follows demonstratiua qualifying signa. The wording “not so much … as” translates the construction with nec tam and quàm and keeps the argument's comparative emphasis. The annotation allows both “colourings” and “tinctures” for tincturæ. In 226 the distinction between cælata, “engraved,” and sculpta, “carved,” sustains the making-image without introducing a separate literal craft technique. The printed forms caractere and caracteremque in 166–167 retain their local spelling rather than being silently normalised to a different Latin form.
Seal — signaculum
Seal, the enduring specific mark transmitted from the first individuals. — Canon 166; 1653, pp. 117, 118.
Impressed character — caracteremque
A character or mark (with the attached conjunction “and”), impressed by form upon the seminal spirit. — Canon 167; 1653, p. 118.
Colourings and tinctures — tincturæ
Colourings or tinctures, sensible gifts related to an inward cause. — Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154.
Smells — odores
Smells, included among the features disclosing hidden powers. — Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154.
Tastes — sapores
Tastes, likewise read as signs rather than mere decoration. — Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154.
Ornament — ornatum
Ornament, an insufficient account of these natural gifts. — Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154.
Implanted radical cause — causam insitam & radicalem
An implanted, rooted cause behind the perceptible feature. — Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154.
Revealing signs — demonstratiua
Revealing or demonstrative, specifying the function of the signs. — Canon 211; 1653, pp. 153, 154.
Exemplars — exemplaria
Exemplars, the heavenly patterns preceding lower copies. — Canon 226; 1653, pp. 164, 165.
Higher seal — sigillum
Seal, the mark of the corresponding higher nature's rule. — Canon 226; 1653, pp. 164, 165.
Signature — signaturam
Signature, the inwardly borne formative mark of that dependence. — Canon 226; 1653, pp. 164, 165.