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First and last matter

derniere matiere

First and last name endpoints of different movements.

From the book

Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordFirst and last name endpoints of different movements.
  • In Sal LumenII.1.5 argues from ordinary burning: the enduring residue contains a salt with a secret fiery power.
  • In this editionThe English preserves the paired “composition and resolution” rather than rendering both as an unspecified transformation.
  • A place to readThe inference moves from what endures in residue towards a generative beginning.

Meaning

First and last name endpoints of different movements. First matter is a beginning of composition; last matter is what remains at resolution’s limit. Nuysement uses the latter to infer the former, but this inferential relation does not make every visible remnant the pure beginning. It must be read beside the distinction between ash and the salt concealed within it.

Use in the book

II.1.5 argues from ordinary burning: the enduring residue contains a salt with a secret fiery power. What is last in that process provides an argument about what first gave the body its substance and life. The proof depends on the author’s account of continuity beneath changed forms, not simply on resemblance between an original object and a pile of ash.

II.2.7 states the relation through the principles of composition and resolution. Water becoming ice or snow and returning to water under heat gives a familiar analogy: an intermediate form can disappear without annihilating its underlying beginning. The author presents the general maxim as shared philosophical certainty, but that claim of consensus is itself part of his argument. His pure earth is not ordinary soil, and the example cannot identify the two.

II.3.23 sharpens the residue side by saying that salt, not ash, is the last matter. Its alleged return from water to salt supports the inference to true mercury as the bodies’ beginning. These stages of argument matter: beginning, visible remainder and ultimate residual principle are related without being three names for the same observable object. They also remain distinct from the hierarchy in which universal first matter precedes particular metallic first matter.

Places to read

  1. Book Two · Chapter 1 · Unit 5The inference moves from what endures in residue towards a generative beginning.
  2. Book Two · Chapter 2 · Unit 7Ice and snow illustrate the contrast of composition with resolution.
  3. Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 23The ultimate residual salt is expressly distinguished from ash.

Translation

The English preserves the paired “composition and resolution” rather than rendering both as an unspecified transformation. It retains “rather than ash” in the later clarification. The labels first and last therefore function as relational terms within an argument, not as a standardized modern list of elements or a claim that the most final visible residue is automatically pure.

Attested forms

derniere matiere; premiere; principes de composition & de resolution; premiere matiere; derniere; composition; resolution