APOLOGY

...that a human is endowed Completing the sentence from the previous page: "nature exhibits to us another thing... [such as that] a human is endowed.". Since metals are deprived and bereft of all these faculties (for they neither grow, nor are they nourished, nor do they move, nor do they feel), their forms are less distinguishable by their actions. Nevertheless, all metals have forms by which they consist, and they take their names from these, and by them, they are distinguished from each other and from other bodies. They consist of and are composed solely from the mixing of elements; therefore, they have no other name than mixed bodies original: "mista corpora". Nor do they possess other faculties besides those that cause them to exist and to have the single form of mixed elements, which is uniform throughout. These faculties are the qualities of the elements: heat and cold as active causes, and moist and dry as passive ones. And because metals possess more of these passive qualities, they are judged more by the endurance original: "perpessione"; in Aristotelian philosophy, this refers to how matter "suffers" or is "acted upon" by qualities rather than being the source of action itself of their matter than by the action of their form.

Metals are only mixed bodies. The forms of metals are recognized more by the endurance of matter than by action. Metals are simply mixed.

For it is the property of form to act, and of matter to endure. If they do act, they act only by the power of the qualities from which they grew together, such as by heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. Other types of bodies—namely plants, irrational animals, and humans—are indeed mixed bodies, but because they possess something else more excellent beyond and above this mixture, they are not properly called "mixed," but take their name and specific form from those faculties through which they act. Metals, however, because they possess nothing besides this mixture, are simply and absolutely called mixed, because those primary qualities produced nothing else in the elements except a mixture. Indeed, the accidents properties like color, weight, or hardness that belong to a thing but do not define its essential nature, both common and specific, follow the forms of all inanimate mixtures. And because these accidents are more suited to matter than to form, the nature of the forms of these mixtures is understood to some extent from them.

Accidents common to all metals. The definition of a metal.

Therefore, the accidents common to all metals are ductility and fusibility. Thus, a metal is defined by Geber The Latinized name of Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. 721–815), a famous alchemist whose writings formed the foundation of medieval European alchemy as:

A metal is a mineral body, fusible, and capable of being extended in every dimension under the hammer.

For "mineral body" is the genus, while "fusible" and "ductile in every dimension" is the specific difference which distinguishes metals from other mineral bodies. For silver and gold have their own specific accidents by which they are distinguished from other metals: namely, that they are perfectly mixed and are not consumed by fire—especially gold.

Definition of gold.

Gold, therefore, is rightly defined by Geber as follows:

Gold is a yellow metallic body, the heaviest of all metals. original: "omniũ metallorum grauis"; literally "heavy of all metals," though it implies the superlative "heaviest" in this context