From the book
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordArgenteitas and Aureitas, glossed by Silberkeit and Goldigkeit, name the determinate silvern or golden character of a thing.
- In KhunrathPage 77 places them in a developmental account.
- In this editionThe hyphenated translations may sound unfamiliar, but substituting “silver” or “gold” would erase the contrast between a nature and its bearer.
- A reading distinctionThe expression “the whole in the whole” on page 120 is part of Khunrath’s reply to the sulphur-seed theory.
Meaning
Argenteitas and Aureitas, glossed by Silberkeit and Goldigkeit, name the determinate silvern or golden character of a thing. The deliberately abstract English “Silver-ness” and “Gold-ness” keeps them distinct from either a lump of metal or a visible silver or gold colour. These are terms of kind and generative determination, not modern elemental composition.
Use in the book
Page 77 places them in a developmental account. The special seminal reasons of Nature specify universal first matter towards silver-ness or gold-ness, so that silver or gold may come to be. Embryonated metals are consequently already determined in kind, even if their metallic development is incomplete. Their immaturity cannot make them universal again.
On page 89 the same terms govern the necessity of actual silver or gold in a specified work. Khunrath says that their natures are nowhere to be found except in the corresponding metals, whether fully metallic or only embryonated. This claim is consistent with his rejection of those metals as universal matter: a thing’s aptitude to impart its own species is different from its being the common ground of all species.
The later dispute over an allegedly self-contained metallic seed makes the distinction sharper. Opponents isolate sulphur as the seed and propose to sow it into the remaining mercury and salt. Khunrath answers that silver-ness and gold-ness reside not in sulphur alone but also in the other essential parts, the whole in the whole. The whole metal, either still united or already separated into its parts, is what must enter the proper field.
The abstract nouns thus serve two contrary-looking but compatible arguments. They explain why a special Stone needs metallic seed, and why extracting one portion of a metal cannot produce an independent universal principle. The specificity distributed through the metal survives changes of outward form. Neither a clear liquid nor a subtle powder escapes it simply by looking unlike ordinary silver or gold.
Places to read
- 1599 p. 77Nature’s seminal reasons specify matter toward silver-ness or gold-ness.
- 1599 p. 89The two determinations are located in their respective ripe or embryonated metals.
- 1599 p. 97Initial composition communicates the properties of silver or gold to the catholic matter.
- 1599 p. 120Metallic character is distributed through sulphur, mercury and salt, rather than confined to sulphur.
- 1599 p. 123The metal’s kernel is redefined as the purest of the whole; the explanation continues on page 124.
Translation in this edition
The hyphenated translations may sound unfamiliar, but substituting “silver” or “gold” would erase the contrast between a nature and its bearer. Conversely, “silveriness” could misleadingly suggest appearance. The Latin and German abstractions should remain available in the form index.
Source note
The expression “the whole in the whole” on page 120 is part of Khunrath’s reply to the sulphur-seed theory. It should not be imported as a modern claim that any separated fraction retains the complete chemical composition of a metal.