The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

hidden nature. Thus, wine brings joy and is familiar to man; gold consumes quicksilver and is extended with it for gilding, etc. Goldsmiths know these things, not the Aristotelians, who cannot provide the reasons for them from Aristotle’s Acroamatic esoteric/oral teaching works. What follows from this? Must the philosophy of Aristotle therefore be adorned with shorter feathers? We deny that this follows. For if military discipline cannot be learned from the philosophy of Aristotle, it should not therefore be scorned. The reasoning is ridiculous: goldsmiths know something in their art that the Aristotelians do not. Therefore, they possess eyes and a mind that are more enlightened.

47. As far as concerns Plato, Democritus, Pythagoras, and Hermes, 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 folly before God in divine matters. In human affairs, however, they are so teeming with vices and absurdities that they have been criticized by more than one, and in particular the Hermetic Dialogues are full of errors. That there are foundations of impious Magic and the acatalepsia incomprehensibility of the Pyrrhonists in the dialogues of Plato is evident both in itself and testified to by the writings of the Platonists, Iamblichus, Proclus, Mirandulanus, Pistorius, Marsilius, etc. But where is it proven that they recognized a seminal virtue in all things? Whatever they knew, they either received through discipline, or learned from Parhedri attendant spirits, or in a natural way through sense, reason, and experience. If you look at discipline, Aristotle does not yield to them. If at Magic, they were wicked; if at the ordinary method, the Peripatetic Aristotelian school leaves them behind by long strides, as the thing itself and the controversies prove.

48. The examples that are brought forward do not prove that for which they are used as proof. For the Paracelsians have a very false opinion regarding 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 gladly 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 such a crasis mixture/constitution and an inexplicable property? Therefore, the Paracelsians are stuck in the same, or rather deeper, mud. For they are bound to prove that it comes from heaven, since it is not true just because it seems so to them. Regarding garlic, it is spoken falsely. Regarding the scorpion, the Paracelsians cannot give a better reason than the Galenists. In both cases.

>> Sympathy and similarity have their reasons in hidden things. 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 often not in themselves, but accidentally. Therefore, many have also despised gold who have become quite famous in the name of wisdom. If pebbles had value in commerce, gold, silver, and the like would become very vile. Wine is so familiar to human nature that it sometimes even becomes a 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 ask for the principle of this as well. Thus, Galenists can argue better than 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 estimated the power of others. If he had correctly understood the Aristotelian Acroamata esoteric lectures, he could have discussed the nature of gold and quicksilver physice naturally from them; he could have taken specific points from the books on generation and the 4th book of the Meteorology and the explanations of other Peripatetics. Tell me, chemists, why do gold and quicksilver love each other? Is it not because they are of the same root, and differ only by imperfection and perfection, solution and coagulation, cooking and crudity, just like water and ice? Why this? Is it not because the crasis constitution and the whole nature are such? But who are those Aristotelian philosophers ignorant of friendship or Sympathy? They have known it from particular nature, and they can provide reasons for gunpowder and fulminating gold from Aristotle. Therefore, the Peripatetics see far more sharply than the Paracelsians, who seem to themselves to see what they do not see at all. The Paracelsian would like to hear the cause of these things from an Aristotelian philosopher. But you little-knowledges, who are sharper than Aristotle, tell us the causes first. We read Crollius on the hostility of Tartarean crusty/acidic salt and ammoniac, but he does not provide satisfaction.

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