Chemical-Philosophical Treatise on Natural and Supernatural Things

example. There are many living creatures that are bereft of all life in the winter season, but as soon as summer returns, natural heat generates new life, so that the body rises again in that substance in which it previously exercised vital motion, just as a herb that dies in winter revives again in the spring. Therefore, the destruction of these things is judged natural, but the repair of the new life through its knowledge is supernatural. But because man is accustomed to all these things, the smallest part, which should be further weighed and examined, is approached, leaving aside both natural and supernatural things.

Likewise, many are accustomed to pass over the character of man with dry feet meaning to pass over something without giving it serious attention, which is itself also supernatural, as well as the monsters in it, which bring blemishes into the world together. All these are indeed natural, but they exhibit themselves supernaturally from the imagination that has arisen, which supernatural form and character the mother impressed on the infant by her imagination by accident. As we indeed often see, some manners are instilled in certain men, which they can never renounce, however much they strive with all their might to be unaccustomed to them. Such an innate power of man is natural, but the conception in the mother’s womb, which the imagination of these things provided, is supernatural and subject to those things which the heaven has impressed.

Finally, I do not deny this: that no one can support what exceeds the powers of nature with unshaken foundations and indubitable causes, to avoid injury to the truth, unless those things are first known which become known to us from their physical course, as they have drawn their birth and their form from supernatural things...