On Minerals

In stones, therefore, some used to say there was a divine part which they called the "soul of stones," claiming it extended itself to the things upon which it acted; but these claims are most absurd. Whether the phenomenon of fascination original: "fascinatione," referring to a type of binding or psychological influence, often associated with the "evil eye" in medieval thought is real or not is a matter for the magic arts. Furthermore, to say that this power is diffused through things—such that it is united and mixed with them as if it were an essential power original: "virtus essentialis," an inherent power defining what a thing is—is the talk of a madman. For if it were mixed with things, it would be subject to being generated in certain things, passing from non-being to being and from potentiality to act—all of which are impossible to attribute to God. However, to say that every thing has something "divine" within it through which it desires and acts toward a divine state of being (or something like the divine) is true, and this has been determined elsewhere. That stones have no souls was determined in the preceding parts of this book; therefore, leaving aside these and similar ideas as if they were laughable, let us say without any ambiguity that stones possess powers virtues In this context, "virtue" (Latin: virtus) means an inherent power, efficacy, or specialized property of a substance, such as a magnet's power to attract iron. of marvelous effect.

They follow from the composition

These powers are inherent in them not from their individual components The basic elements like earth or water, but they follow from the "composition" The "compositum" or the specific unified form of the stone due to a cause we shall determine below. It is true that animate beings should rather possess these powers, for it is a rule in all of nature that a thing occupied with higher powers is drawn away and hindered from lower ones. A sign of this is that intellectual beings, like humans, do not perceive the changes of the elements as well as brute animals; for example, chicks indicate the differences of hours and seasons better than humans. And a man himself who is occupied in meditation does not operate through sight or hearing, so that he does not even perceive the things before his eyes. Just as it is in all of nature, animate things occupied with the higher powers of the soul do not operate with the lower, noble powers which non-animate things, being mixed, do operate with. Yet there is nothing in the whole of nature that does not have an operation proper to its species—just as scammony A Mediterranean plant (Convolvulus scammonia) used as a powerful purgative in medieval medicine purges bile, and other things of this sort. This is proven in "simple" medicines Medicines made from a single ingredient and in the science of incantation and binding alligation The practice of tying amulets or natural objects (like animal parts or herbs) to the body to produce a healing or magical effect., where it is shown that the parts of various animals—tied to the neck, the heart, or another limb of a human body—produce marvelous effects. The same is true of herbs, roots, and woods. Even the very flesh of humans—and what seems less likely, the dry waste excreted by humans and the dung of wolves—have marvelous operations against poison or other plagues. Because of this, it is certain that stones undoubtedly possess operations—either all of them or nearly all of them—even though their operations remain unknown in most cases. And therefore John of Damascus A 7th-8th century Syrian monk and scholar whose writings on natural philosophy and theology were highly influential in the West. says that no thing is destitute of its own proper and substantial operation.

John of Damascus

For it would be quite laughable to say that the strong "primary qualities" Heat, cold, moisture, and dryness—the basic building blocks of matter in Aristotelian physics. have operations, yet the "substantial forms" The essential nature that makes a thing what it is given to things as the goals of nature—being divine and the very best—should have no operations at all. Although these forms are not "active" and "passive" in the sense of changing matter, they are operative in that operation which belongs to a perfected thing, which nature completes through that which is divine and best.

Chapter Two: On the four opinions of philosophers

It has been asked for a long time by philosophers from what cause fateful original: "fatales," meaning ordained by nature or the stars powers are infused into stones, and to recite all the different opinions would be a waste of effort. Let us therefore touch upon four probable ones, and afterward state our own opinion and confirm it through reason. Some have said that such powers are present in stones due to the elements that compose them. When it is objected that elements only operate through primary qualities (heat, cold, etc.) and that the operations of stones cannot be reduced to these primary qualities, they respond that elements have certain operations by themselves and others when mixed. In a mixture, an elemental quality operates through motion as an instrument, and then it can perform many operations it cannot do on its own. They argue that just as the alteration of food and its elevation and change into flesh is not reduced to any power other than the "digestive heat"—which we know to be the heat of fire that gathers similar things and separates different things (as stated in the second book of Meteorology)—so they say these powers should be attributed to no other power but the elemental. This is because a "composite" thing only operates through the mediation of the power of the elements within it. This was the opinion of certain ancient philosophers which Alexander the Greek Peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias, a famous commentator on Aristotle who emphasized material and elemental causes. seems to defend.

Alexander

For he attributes everything that exists—whether animate or not—to the elements. He even says that the intellect is something following from the "complexion" The specific balance or mixture of qualities in a body of the elements. He claims that when the elements themselves are complexly joined, they perform the most marvelous and highest operations. He says the power that rules and directs the elemental qualities in a mixture is nothing but the resulting "complexion," and he asserts this is marvelous. He proves this through the works of alchemy, in which "simples" Unmixed substances are of little use, but when they are made into complexes, they yield very admirable effects. However, this opinion did not please Plato, who says that all lower things are "ideated" Patterned or modeled after an archetype by higher ideas.

Plato: All things are ideated

He said these Ideas were separate and of wonderful power; they are the things that generate whatever is generated, as he asserts. He says that those things which receive a greater likeness to the "Separate Ideas," and in which the Ideas are less submerged in matter, possess marvelous powers in an operation similar to the operation of the Separate Idea. He says the operation of a Separate Idea is to work by transforming and altering the matter of things that can be generated and destroyed. Therefore, in those things where the Idea is less "drowned" in matter, it does not cease to perform marvelous things even after it is incorporated. He says this is the case in precious stones and many other natural things. The proof for this kind of opinion we have gathered not from Plato himself, but from the Platonists like Apuleius A 2nd-century Roman philosopher and author of "The Golden Ass," known for his interest in Platonism and magic. and certain others, who say that beneath the subject of mortal and defunct things, there is something that is immortal...