Conjunction

Meaning

Conjunction is the coming-together of the two differently qualified participants in the subsequent work. Part Two emphasizes that they differ in quality as well as quantity; the union therefore is not merely the juxtaposition of identical things. Dissolution permits their intimate mingling, compared with ice in warm water and with bride and bridegroom. The closing process-poem places conjoining in the second work, after the preliminary work has been separately named. Its location matters: the treatise’s original single matter and this later conjunction are stage-specific claims. The English keeps the learned noun in the prose and the active verb in the poem, preserving both a condition and an action without requiring a modern chemical interpretation.