CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THINGS.
BOOK IV.
Concerning the Life of Natural Things.
NONE can deny that the air gives life to all corporeal and substantial things which are born and generated from the earth. But as to what and of what kind the life of each particular thing is, it should be known that the life of things is none other than a spiritual essence, an invisible and impalpable thing, a spirit and a spiritual thing. On this account there is nothing corporeal but has latent within itself a spirit and life, which, as just now said, is none other than a spiritual thing.[1] But not only that lives which moves and acts, as men, animals, worms in the earth, birds under the sky, fishes in the sea, but also all corporeal and substantial things. For here we should know that God, at the beginning of the creation of all things, created no body whatever without its own spirit, which spirit it contains after an occult manner within itself. For what is the body without the spirit? Absolutely nothing. So it is that the spirit holds concealed within itself the virtue and power of the thing, and not the body. For in the body is death, and the body is subject to death, and in the body nothing but death must be looked for. For the body can be destroyed and corrupted in various ways, but not the spirit: for it always remains a living spirit, and is bound up with life. It also keeps its own body alive, but in the removal of the body from it, it leaves the body separate and dead, and returns to its own place whence it had come, that is to say, into chaos, and into the air of the higher and lower firmament. Hence it is evident that there are different kinds of spirits, just as there are different kinds of bodies. There are celestial and infernal spirits, human and metallic, the spirits of salts, gems, and marcasites, arsenical spirits, spirits of potables, of roots, of liquids, of flesh, blood, bones, etc. Wherefore you may know that the spirit is in very truth the life and balsam
- ↑ Life is a veil or covering which encloses three principles—sulphur, salt, and mercury.—Paramirum, Lib. I. The life of the body is fire.—De Ente Astrorum, c. 6. There is a twofold life in man: there is the life of the soul, which proceeds from the nature of God; but I speak here as a physician, and not as a theologian. There is also a life of the animal kind, which is of air and fire, and the same is domiciled in the body, which is earth and water. So is man dowered with an animal and a sidereal life.—De Pestilitate, Tract I. In another sense the life of man is said to be triplex—necrocomic, cagastric, and salnitric. But this has reference to the animal life only.—Liber Azoth. That which sustains the body is the life, but the life itself is from God, and not from man. This life consists in four things—humours, complexions, natural species, and gifts or virtues.—De Generatione Hominis.
