The Collected Works of Benedict de Spinoza

Preliminary Work on Vital Philosophy

are hidden. Wine brings joy, and it is familiar to man; gold takes on quicksilver argentum viuum quicksilver/mercury, and with it, it is extended for gilding, and so on. Goldsmiths know these things, unlike the Aristotelians, who cannot provide reasons for them based on Aristotle’s Acroamatics esoteric or oral teachings. What follows from this? Does it mean Aristotle's philosophy should be adorned with shorter feathers? We deny that this follows. Just because military discipline cannot be learned from the philosophy of Aristotle, it does not mean that the latter should be spurned. That is a ridiculous argument: goldsmiths know something in their art that Aristotle does not. Therefore, they have more enlightened eyes and minds.

47. As far as Plato, Democritus, Pythagoras, and Hermes are concerned, it is false that they saw with celestial and angelic eyes, unless you take devils for angels, since they were wicked magicians and idolaters, whose entire wisdom is foolishness before God in divine matters. In human affairs, they are so full of vices and absurdities that they have been rebuked by many, and the Hermetic Dialogues are, first and foremost, full of errors. That there are foundations of impious Magic in Plato's dialogues, and the acatalepsia incomprehensibility of the Pyrrhonians, is evident both in itself and testified to by the writings of the Platonists, Iamblichus, Proclus, Mirandulanus, Pistorius, Marsilius, etc. From where, truly, is it proven that they recognized a seminal power in all things? Whatever they knew, they either received through instruction, or learned from Parhedri familiar spirits, or in a natural way through sense, reason, and experience. If you look at instruction, Aristotle does not yield to them. If at Magic, they were wicked: if at the ordinary method, the Peripatetics leave them far behind, as the matter itself and the controversies prove.

48. The examples that are brought forward do not prove what they are intended to prove. For the Paracelsians hold a very false opinion about the magnet, namely that iron is attracted by it because of an iron spirit, which attracts more strongly in a foreign body than in its own. Even if there were a spirit, which the Peripatetics and Galenists readily concede, those new philosophers must say why it attracts. Is it because it is sulfurous? But why does it attract sulfur? Because it is familiar. Why? Is it not because of a certain crasis mixture/temperament and an inexplicable property? Therefore, in the same, or rather in deeper mud, the Paracelsians are stuck. For they are also bound to prove that what is said to be from heaven is true, since it is not true just because it seems so to them. What is said about garlic is false. The Paracelsians cannot give a better reason for the scorpion than the Galenists. In both cases, Sympathy affinity/connection and likeness have hidden reasons. That a man loves gold is particular and accidental. The same man also loves girls, and glory, and estates, and many other things which he thinks are good and pleasant to him, and this is often not of itself, but by accident. Therefore, many have despised gold who have been quite famous in the name of wisdom. If pebbles were of value in trade, gold, silver, and similar things would become very worthless. Wine is so familiar to human nature that it sometimes becomes poison, whether you provide the whole or its essence. But was this unknown to the ancients? Do the Paracelsians not beg the question when they say that the spirit of wine is the cause? For why is this the cause? You will say Heaven. But I also ask for the principle of this. Thus, the Galenists can argue better than the Paracelsians about the familiarity of gold and quicksilver, even though the nature of hydrargyrum mercury/quicksilver was unexplored by Galen.

49. From his own impotence, that man judged the power of others. If he had correctly understood Aristotle’s Acroamatics, he could have also argued from them generally? about the nature of gold and quicksilver: he could have taken the particulars from the books on generation and the fourth book of the Meteorology, and the declarations of other Peripatetics. Tell me, chemists, why do gold and quicksilver mutually love each other? Is it not because they are of the same root, and differ only in imperfection and perfection, in solution and coagulation, in cooking and rawness, just like water and ice? Why this? Is it not because such is the temperament and the whole nature? But who are those Aristotelian philosophers who are ignorant of friendship or Sympathy? They have known it from particular nature, and they can provide reasons from Aristotle for gunpowder and fulminating gold. Therefore, the Peripatetics see far more sharply than the Paracelsians, who seem to themselves to see what they do not see at all. A Paracelsian would like to hear the cause of these things from an Aristotelian philosopher. But you, dabblers, who are sharper than Aristotle, speak first. We have read Crollius on the hostility of Tartarean salt and ammonia, but it is not sufficient.

50. If the Chemical art does not intervene, the causes of all things cannot be explained from the philosophy of Aristotle. Indeed, I say, not even if the chemical art does intervene, as far as special and proper things are concerned. We hold only as much about general things as can be proven. We have, however, seen various writings of the Paracelsians about the causes of things. Truly, we have not found wisdom and truth in all of them.