Composition, mixture, and disposition

Use in the book

In the main treatise the Compositum is the combined matter placed within a glass. The immediate concern is retaining it rather than allowing it to escape. The word identifies the whole now being governed; it does not identify a modern chemical compound or state a fixed molecular composition.

Nature's dialogue develops a more expansive account. Nature brings elements into a mixture and first composition within the earth. A later description distinguishes a second mixture from that first composition as retained earthly vapours enter the sulphur-and-quicksilver relation. The distinction makes composition a history of formation, not merely the moment a human worker combines two visible materials.

Nature also describes orderly mingling and connection yielding a uniform, homogeneous subject. In the alchemist's response, the disposed patient is the place where an agent's operation can occur. The recipient's suitability therefore matters as much as the agent's power. The later speech against elemental separation makes a further point: humans do not know the quantities, qualities, and manner of union needed to reconstruct a natural compound once they have torn it apart. Nature can compose and dispose the Stone without the alleged separation and recombination.

This last argument must retain its asymmetry. The speakers do not infer from the existence of a mixture that a human can isolate its components and restore them at will. Nor does the main treatise's vessel-compound automatically mean precisely the same thing as the dialogue's first elemental composition. The family helps readers compare whole, arrangement, and operative receptivity without erasing differences in stage and speaker.

Places to read

1. Part II: matter and the work · unit 19The united matter is now designated a compound.
2. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 2Nature brings elements into first mixture in earth’s belly.
3. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 5One mass and second mixture arise from first composition.
4. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 10Ordered mingling produces a homogeneous subject.
5. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 15The patient must be disposed to receive action.
6. Nature’s Demonstration to the Erring Alchemist · unit 19Nature composes the Stone without elemental separation.

Translation

English “compound,” “mixture,” “composition,” and “disposition” largely preserve the source's learned distinctions. “Homogeneous subject” is especially liable to be over-modernized: here it names an ordered uniform thing in a natural-philosophical argument, not a modern analytic finding. The translation's agent-and-patient sentence remains conceptually difficult, so the entry explains its explicit dependence on a disposed recipient without silently rewriting the agent as its own patient.

Attested forms

andere mixtion; homogenisches; disponirten; Compositum; mixtion; composition; massam; commixtion; connexion; disponiren; componiren