Anima Magica Abscondita

it is, and therefore he may pocket his definition. Again you will object that he tells me not only that Nature is a principle, but that Nature is Form, and by consequence Form is Nature. This is "the same by the same" original: Idem per Idem; a logical fallacy where a thing is defined by itself; he keeps me in a circle of notions, but resolves nothing at all essentially. Besides, Form in the genuine scope of the language signifies the outward symmetry or shape of a compound. But the Peripatetics Followers of Aristotle's philosophy, who impose their will on languages just as they do on Nature, render it otherwise in their books and mistake the effect for the cause. I shall therefore take it in their sense and be content for once to agree to their commentaries.

Form, then, in their conception is the same as the plastic power original: δύναμις πλαστική (dunamis plastike); the formative force in nature, or formative force, which Aristotle defines as the "reason of the essence" original: λόγος τῆς οὐσίας (logos tes ousias). I must confess I do not understand him, and therefore I shall take him on trust, as his disciples explain him. "For it is the reason," says Magirus Johannes Magirus (1558–1631), a German physician and Aristotelian philosopher, "because it completes, polishes, and informs the natural thing, so that by it one thing may be distinguished from another" original: Est enim λόγος quoniam absolvit, expolit, & informat Rem Naturalem, ut per eam una ab Alterâ distinguatur. This is an expression of the office and effect of forms, but says nothing at all regarding their substance or essence.

Now let us see what he says regarding the Soul of Man. The Soul, says he, is entelechy original: ἐντελέχεια; Aristotle's term for the realization or actuality of a potential, which is in plain terms consummation, or—barbarously but truly—finibania A Latinized term implying the "finishing" or "limiting" principle, though his own followers falsely translate it as the act of an organic body original: Actus Corporis Organici.