Quid sit natura.
The Difficulty of Defining Nature
Because nature has been mentioned often and the ancients left no complete account, the author undertakes to gather their threefold usage of the term.
Since we've now spoken of nature so many times, even though, as Cicero says, it's difficult to define nature, the meaning of this word still shouldn't be passed over entirely in silence. And since we're not able to say everything we want to say, we should be silent about that which we're able to be silent about. The ancients are found to have said a great deal about nature, but nothing in such a way that something doesn't seem left over still. Still, so far as I can gather from their sayings, they were accustomed to use the meaning of this term especially in three ways, assigning its own definition to each.
Three Meanings of Nature
The ancients distinguished three senses of nature: the divine archetypal cause, the proper existence of each thing, and a craftsman-fire producing sensible things from heat and moisture.
First, they used this name to mean the archetypal model of all things that exists in the divine mind, and by whose design everything was fashioned; and they said that nature is the primordial cause of each individual thing, the source from which it has not only its existence but also its particular character. To this signification the following definition is assigned: Nature is that which assigns to each thing its own existence. In the second way, they said that nature is the proper existence of each individual thing. To this signification the following definition is assigned: Nature is what forms each thing by its own distinctive difference. In the sense we're accustomed to use, nature is what makes all weights incline toward the earth, light things seek what is high, fire burn, and water moisten. A third definition runs like this: Nature is a craftsman-fire, proceeding from a certain force into the things of sense, to bring them into being. For natural philosophers say that everything is brought into being from heat and moisture. Hence Vergil calls Ocean 'father,' and Valerius Soranus, in a certain verse about Jove, speaks in the sense of ethereal fire, saying:
A Verse on Jove
A quotation from Valerius Soranus applies the third definition of nature to Jove as ethereal fire, father and mother of the gods.
Jupiter almighty, discoverer of things and of kings, progenitor and mother of the gods — true, one, and the same.
Read the original Latin
Quia vero iam toties naturam nominavimus, licet, ut ait Tullius, Naturam definire difficile sit, non tamen huius vocabuli significatio omnino silentio praetereunda videtur. neque, quia non omnia quae volumus dicere possumus, id quod possumus tacere debemus. plura veteres de natura dixisse inveniuntur, sed nihil ita ut non aliquid restare videatur. quantum tamen ego ex eorum dictis conicere possum, tribus maxime modis huius vocabuli significatione uti solebant, singulis suam definitionem assignando.
Primo modo per hoc nomen significare voluerunt illud archetypum exemplar rerum omnium, quod in mente divina est, cuius ratione omnia formata sunt, et dicebant naturam esse unius cuiusque rei primordialem causam suam, a qua non solum esse sed etiam talis esse habeat. huic significationi talis definitio assignatur: Natura est quae unicuique rei suum esse attribuit. secundo modo naturam esse dicebant proprium esse uniuscuiusque rei. cui significationi talis definitio assignatur: Natura unamquamque rem informans propria differentia dicitur. secundum quam significationem dicere solemus: Natura est omnia pondera ad terram vergere, levia alta petere, ignem urere, aquam humectare. tertia definitio talis est: Natura est ignis artifex, ex quadam vi procedens in res sensibiles procreandas. physici namque dicunt, omnia ex calore et humore procreari. unde Vergilius Oceanum patrem appellat et Valerius Soranus in quodam versu de Iove in significatione ignis aetherei dicit:
Iuppiter omnipotens rerum regumque repertor, Progenitor genitrixque Deum verum unus et idem.
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