From the book
Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici
Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe three sorts of goods are external fortune, bodily well-being and the sciences belonging to spirit.
- In Sal LumenIII.10 uses the classification to explain why philosophy is praised as happiness, honour and glory.
- In this editionThe English renders sciences as knowledge in the qualifying sentence, making clear that the word is broader than modern laboratory disciplines but narrower there than every claim to learning.
- A place to readThe explicit threefold division is followed by a restriction to truly effective knowledge.
Meaning
The three sorts of goods are external fortune, bodily well-being and the sciences belonging to spirit. Fortune includes riches, greatness and dignities; bodily felicity includes youth, health, strength and fitness. The third is then narrowed to genuinely effective knowledge, especially knowledge of Nature’s works and secrets. It is a hierarchy of human goods, not a list of three natural substances or the three biological kinds.
Use in the book
III.10 uses the classification to explain why philosophy is praised as happiness, honour and glory. The first two classes are uncertain and perishable, unable by themselves to secure life against change and decline. The third, acquired by a more solid means, is said to provide the others and protect them against fortune and mortal corruption. The restrictive phrase “I mean, however” is essential: the claim is not that any academic accomplishment automatically produces wealth or health.
The argument also explains an apparent reversal of priorities. Excellent people are said to have neglected or even abhorred the goods of fortune so that they could seek bodily and intellectual goods more freely, especially the third. This does not make riches inherently useless throughout the book. Philosophy’s later promise of long life and inexhaustible treasure treats them as benefits rightly possessed through knowledge, rather than as the highest object of an ignorant pursuit.
The final mortality limit remains in force. The goods are to preserve and extend life within natural composition; III.12 denies bodily immortality, and Nature’s subsequent quoted promise ends in death. The stormy-sea figure then dramatizes life without the benefits of health and sufficiency, with disease and poverty as conspiratorial adversaries. It reinforces their value without changing the earlier ordering of knowledge as the means of securing them.
Places to read
- Book Three · Unit 10The explicit threefold division is followed by a restriction to truly effective knowledge.
- Book Three · Unit 12The bodily promise is limited by natural composition.
- Book Three · Unit 14The later two gifts are long healthy life and riches, not another threefold classification.
- Book Three · Unit 15The creature still eventually dies within the quoted promise.
- Book Three · Unit 16Disease and poverty conspire through covert agreements, not intellectual cognition.
Translation
The English renders sciences as knowledge in the qualifying sentence, making clear that the word is broader than modern laboratory disciplines but narrower there than every claim to learning. “Of themselves” retains the limitation on the first two goods: wealth and bodily fitness are not simply denied value. In III.16 secrettes intelligences means covert agreements between the personified adversaries, not the intellectual knowledge praised in the third good.
Attested forms
trois sortes de biens; fortune; felicité du corps; sciences; incertains & perissables; J'entens toutefois; biens