Elevation, renewal and multiplying forms

Meaning

Effective elevations, renovations, mutations, variations and multiplications of forms are a series of transformations attributed to intelligent ordering. Their plurality is significant: elevation is not the only kind of change being explained.

I.2.1 treats these effects as signs that brute matter alone cannot account for the world's operations. Renovation concerns renewal; mutation and variation express changes; multiplication extends the range or number of forms. “Effective” marks actual efficacy rather than a merely verbal ascent. The series supports the inference to divine intelligence and its mediation. It should neither be reduced to vertical movement in a vessel nor paraphrased as modern biological evolution. Later operative sublimation can be compared with it, but the immediate passage concerns the intelligibility of cosmic transformation.

The translation retains the series instead of replacing it with a generic “change.” This keeps the distinct French retrieval forms available without inventing a technical operation for each noun.