Quasi-body

Meaning

Quasi corporelle and quasi corps qualify rather than cancel corporeality. In II.2.3 the investigator seeks the subtle beginning attached to earth which is almost bodily and apt to take a body, not a finished metallic offspring already visible in the mine. In II.2.20 matter is again “not properly body, but quasi-body”: a companion and, as it were, receptacle of forms, desiring bodily realization. Being full of forms does not mean that all these forms are already actualized. The new English’s “almost” and “as it were” preserve the intermediate status which an unqualified translation as “body” would suppress.