|
|
|
Lull's Book of Propositions
|
|
|
9 - Fig. Elements
The senses
and the imagination depict the first elemental figure with ten cameras
displaying the names of the elements. Surrounding this, a circle displays
the terms for sixteen essences and properties of the elements, which are
also shown in the second figure with its five circles, where the two inner
circles each display all four elements, and each of the three outer circles
contains all sixteen terms referring to the essences and properties of
the elements:
Igneity,
Aereity, Aqueity, Terreity, Being, Form, Matter, Simplicity, Composition,
Substance, Accident, Virtue, Operation, Interiority, Exteriority, Motion.
Through
the alphabet, the principles of the elements enter into the Common
figure; and S. is similar to the elements, insofar as S. is described with
sixteen terms denoting spiritual essences in the same way as the elements
are described with sixteen terms denoting corporeal essences. Like the
other figures, this figure should be made of revolving circles to form
all its cameras.
While
the senses and imagination mix with the intellect in this way, the imagination
and intellect leave the senses and rise above, as the imagination imagines
and the intellect understands the universal figure of the elements, namely
four things, properties or essences which are igneity, aereity, aqueity
and terreity. Each essence's being has an active and passive nature, as
all four together constitute a single chaotic body made of universal form
and matter. In this body, other elemented bodies exist like fish in water
or birds in the air.
From this
common body in which universal mixture and digestion proceed, and which
fills all the space beneath the lunar sphere, issues the influence of four
powers, namely the four elements as they retain the essence of their common
body which consists of the said four things, properties or essences. And
these four powers, or four elements, produce substantial beings in real
species that exist in the universality of nature containing all natural
forms.
And thus,
the imagination and intellect discourse through the sense data and describe
the elemental figure universally with the sixteen above principles. Although
the imagination partly fails to imagine all this, the intellect rises above
the imagination by understanding that the four elements have form and matter
that is not perceptible to the senses, since it understands that fire both
gives and receives within substance as do the other elements, and that
by doing this it produces an offspring, namely compound fire with a visible
shape that can be sensed. But the part that cannot be received by the offspring
from elemental homogeneity remains outside as simple fire, and the same
applies to the other elements.
As it
understands these things, the intellect forms a universal intellectual
concept of the elemental figure as said above, and from this it descends
to particulars inasmuch as the universal concept is composed of particulars,
given that the said common body is constituted and composed of the four
essences as ingredients. And the four elements exist as powers and acts
of the common body, while they exercise their acts in the supposites that
they produce from themselves through generation and corruption. Thus, the
four compound elements are acts of the four simple elements.
When this
figure is disposed in the intellect as stated above, the intellect investigates
and makes judgments with its own statements and those of the elemental
figure, while maintaining in itself, in the imagination and in the senses,
a universal figure with its constituent particulars, which all stand together
against any particular that contravenes the universal and particular dispositions
governing this figure in the senses, imagination and intellect.
As said
above, the intellect perceives the shape and propositions of the elemental
figure through the senses and imagination. Not only can it gain knowledge
of natural operations, and give a knowledgeable response regarding any
particular found in the universality of nature, and solve questions and
disputes about natural things; but moreover, this figure is used jointly
with the other figures to discover metaphors by comparing elemental nature
with the other figures, to solve questions or adduce arguments with this
Art, in which the elemental figure is most useful.

|