Complete Works, Vol. V

to grant this power first to Mars as the source of that power, but only to be varied according to the proportion of the application of the light of other stars and the matter receiving it, as we have said, and from thence diverse kinds of stones and metals are generated in diverse places.

Refutation.

This statement is entirely unnatural: because here we are not seeking the first acting and moving causes, which perhaps are the stars and the virtues and dispositions of the stars: for this is proper to another science: but we are seeking the proximate efficient causes, which, existing in the matter, transmute the matter. For if the statement of Hermes were correct, then having known the cause of the generation of stones, we would know the efficient cause of all generable things. For we know that the motion and power of the celestial bodies is a cause other than nature, as are the rising and setting of the stars and their rays. Furthermore, these causes are acting equivocally, and have nothing of communion with the matter of generable things. We, however, according to the propriety of natural science, seek causes that are proper to their effects and that transmute the matter, and do so univocally.

The opinion of Empedocles.

For this reason Empedocles, quite later than Hermes, confirmed that stones are generated by burning heat, taking his assertion from the ancient fable told about Pyrrha and Deucalion, in which stones are called the bones of the great mother. Bones, according to Empedocles, are composed mostly of the parts of Vulcan i.e., fire. Refutation. 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 Meteorology original: "Meteororum" that those things whose matter is principally water are coagulated by cold. Furthermore, the statement of Empedocles does not hold well: since soon in the second book On the Soul 1 we will show that a burning element is for ashes, and does not consume to a determinate species unless it is moved by some other power, and is directed by it toward a species, just as digestive heat, moved by the soul, converts that which it transmutes toward the species of flesh, nerve, bone, and similar parts of an animated body.

The opinion of Democritus.

Democritus, however, and certain others, say that elemented things have souls, and that these are the causes of the generation of stones: for which reason he says that a soul is in a stone just as it is in any other seed of a thing to be generated, and that it moves the internal heat of the matter in the generation of the stone, in the same way that a hammer is moved by a smith for the generation of an axe or a saw.

Refutation.

But we have shown elsewhere that these things cannot stand: for the soul is not found in sensible things but primarily in vegetables plants/living things: for stones have no operation congruent with a soul, since they use neither food nor sense, nor life at all according to any act of life. To say that a soul is in stones because of generation alone does not hold well: because generation is not according to the generation of animated vegetables and sensible animals. For we see all of these bring forth things of their own species from their seeds: a stone, however, does none of these things at all. But we do not see stones generated from stones at all: rather, we see each stone generated from some cause which is in the place of its generation: for which reason a stone seems to have no generative power at all.

The opinion of the alchemists.

Some, however, of those who in our time have studied alchemy alchimicis, seem to want to say that every stone is generated by accident, and that there is no other proper cause of its generation. For they say that igneous heat, wherever it is found, by roasting the apt matter, turns it into a stone just as happens in a stone cooked by the roasting of fire: and they say these stones have no proper generative thing, but only a material principle. Furthermore, they say that stones do not have any form according to species, but only the passions...