On Minerals

...nature had been deadened. As for the statement that "the wind carries it in its belly" original: "portat ventus in ventre suo"; a famous line from the Emerald Tablet, a foundational text of alchemy attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, this refers to the refinement of the material toward the qualities of air. For this reason, he says the wind carries the material in its belly when the material is placed in an alembic alembic: a distillation apparatus consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used here as an analogy for natural evaporation, which is a vessel made in the same way as that in which rose water is produced. For then, by evaporating, the substance is thinned and refined toward the qualities of air; this is why he says the wind carries the material in its belly. Then, a liquid of water or oil distills further from the mouth of the alembic, possessing all the virtues of the elements.

Indeed, art performs this with labor and many errors, whereas nature does so without difficulty or labor. The reason for this is that nature moves the powers existing within the matter of stones and metals by means of certain and effective celestial powers when the matter is being worked upon. These powers are the operations of "Intelligences" In medieval cosmology, Intelligences were spiritual beings that moved the celestial spheres and influenced the earthly realm which do not err except by accident—that is, due to the inequality of the material. In human art, however, none of these are present; rather, art relies on the "borrowed help" of human ingenuity and fire. From these things, therefore, it is shown that whether earth or water is called the material of stones, it must have been strongly acted upon by the qualities of the other elements. These things have therefore been said concerning the material of stones in general.

Chapter Four: On the cause of generation according to the various opinions of the philosophers.

Avicenna

The "efficient cause" The agent or force that brings something into being of stones is said by almost everyone who has spoken on the subject to be the "mineral power" virtus mineralis: a specific formative force believed to exist in the earth, similar to the "virtue" in a seed that makes it grow into a plant. However, since this power is common to both stones and all metals, it seems to be an insufficiently defined cause for stones, since it has not been confirmed by these authors—neither by distinction nor by specific detail—what this thing is that they call the "mineral power." Nor is anything more found in the writings of Avicenna except that stones are generated from earth and water through this mineral power.

Hermes, however, in the book he wrote on universal power, seems to say that the generative cause of stones is a certain power which he claims is one and the same in all things; but it acquires different names because of the diversity of the things generated. He offers the example of the light of the sun, which alone is the generator of all things, yet when it is shared—not through a single passive capacity—it performs different operations within them. It pleased him to first attribute this power to Mars as the source of that virtue, but he claimed it varied according to the proportion of the application of the light of the other stars and the material receiving it, as we have said. He believed that from this, different kinds of stones and metals were generated in different places. This statement is entirely "unnatural" Meaning it relies on astrology/metaphysics rather than observable physical physics, because here we are not seeking the primary moving causes—which are perhaps the stars and their powers and dispositions (for that belongs to another branch of science)—but we are seeking the "proximate" efficient causes which, existing within the matter, transform the matter. If the statement of Hermes were sufficient, then once the cause of the

generation of all things capable of being generated was established, we would already know the efficient cause. For we know that the motion and power of the heavens is a cause different from nature—namely, the rising and setting of the stars and their rays. Furthermore, these causes act "equivocally" Meaning they act generally rather than specifically; the sun melts wax but hardens clay and have nothing in common with the material of the things being generated.

We, however, according to the proper method of natural science, seek causes specific to their effects, and especially the material and the unifying force that transforms it. Because of this, Empedocles, who came quite a bit after Hermes, asserted that stones are generated by "glassy heat" original: "calido vitreo"; likely referring to the intense heat that fuses sand into glass, taking his assertion from the ancient fable of Pyrrha and Deucalion, in which stones are called the "bones of the Great Mother" In Greek myth, after a great flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulated the earth by throwing stones (the bones of Mother Earth) behind them, which turned into people. According to Empedocles, bones are composed mostly of the "parts of Vulcan" meaning fire. But this is entirely false, since we know (and it will be shown below) that certain stones are generated from cold. For we have already said in the book On Meteorology that those things whose material is primarily water are coagulated by the cold. Furthermore,

The opinion of Empedocles [is refuted]

the statement of Empedocles does not hold up well because we have already shown in the second book of On the Soul that the element of heat tends to turn things into ashes and does not consume them into a determined species unless some other power moves it and directs it toward that species. Just as "digestive heat," moved by the soul, converts what it transforms into the species of flesh, nerve, bone, and similar parts of a living body.

Democritus and certain others say that every elemental thing has a soul, and that these souls are the causes of the generation of stones. For this reason, he says a soul is in a stone just as it is in any other "seed" of a thing to be generated, and that this soul moves the heat inherent in the matter during the stone's generation, in the same way that a hammer is moved by a blacksmith toward the

Democritus

generation of an axe or a tool. However, we have shown elsewhere that this cannot stand. For a soul is not found in inanimate things, but first appears in plants; stones have no operation consistent with a soul, since they use neither food nor sense, nor life at all according to any act of living.

Error.

To say that a soul exists in stones solely for the sake of their generation does not hold up, because their generation is not like the generation of living plants and sentient animals. For we see all those things generated from their own seeds and by themselves according to their species; a stone does none of these things at all. Nor do we see stones generated from other stones at all; rather, we see each stone generated from some cause that exists in the place of its generation. Because of this, a stone seems to have no generative power of its own at all.

Some of those who have studied alchemy in our own time seem to say that every stone is generated "by accident" and that there is no other proper cause for its generation. For they say that wherever "fiery heat" finds suitable matter, it turns it into stone by "roasting" it, just as happens to a stone cooked by the roasting of a fire. And these people say that stones have no specific generative principle, but only a material principle. Furthermore, they say that stones have no "form" In the Aristotelian sense of an organizing principle or essence...

Another error