From the book
Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici
Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Meaning
II.1.5 quotes six lines from the Romant Philosophique attributed to Jean de la Fontaine, in which Nature speaks about her relation to fire and points to salt as witness. Grafting names a close dependence or incorporation: it is not a literal instruction to graft a plant into a flame. The poem gives Nature a first-person voice that supports the surrounding claim of hidden life in bodily salt.
The witness is rhetorical and attributed. It should not be treated as a laboratory observation independently confirming the author's claim that fire fathers and multiplies salt. Nor should this Jean de la Fontaine be identified without evidence with a later famous writer of the same name. The local citation and speaking figure are sufficient to explain the passage's authority.
Places to read
- Book Two · Chapter 1 · Unit 5Nature's quoted testimony pictures her presence as grafting and salt as witness.
- Book Two · Chapter 3 · Unit 22The cited verse’s fire-and-salt rhetoric does not erase the later explicit denial of generation by fire.
Word family
Entee and tesmoignage: Nature’s voice in the Jean de la Fontaine citation. Exact historical spellings are listed separately.
Attested forms
Nature est dans le feu antee; tesmoing; Jean de la Fontaine; Romant Philosophique