Manuscripts of the Dibner Collection MS. 1031 B, The Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Smithsonian Institution

The English part of Smithsonian MS.Dibner 1031B, usually called Of Natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation after the first words in the text, is an eleven-page tract representing Newton's attempt to provide a synopsis of his early alchemical reading, and to come up with what is, essentially, a "theory of everything," namely a physical theory that unifies and accounts for all known natural phenomena. Just as some modern physicists employ superstring theory or other highly abstract models in their attempt to penetrate beneath the appearances and arrive at the most general explanation of nature possible, so Newton uses imperceptible ethereal media in Of Natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation to provide a unified explanation of the world. Although Newton's alchemically-based theory remained at the conceptual level in Of Natures obvious laws and did not belong to the realm of mathematical physics, it tried to account for widely diverse phenomena, including organic life, the origin of heat and flame, the mechanical cause of gravitation, cohesion, the generation of metals and minerals, and so forth, by making an appeal to a thin, material ether, or rather several ethers of graduated subtlety. Many of these ideas also appear in Newton's 1675 "Hypothesis of Light," a letter sent to the Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg 1. For this reason as well as handwriting considerations, Of Natures obvious laws is usually thought to have been composed in the first half of the 1670's 2. Much of the inspiration for Newton's ethereal theory in both texts comes from contemporary alchemy.

[1r-1v] Of Natures obvious laws begins with a discussion of the dendrites grown within flasks by early modern alchemists, Like many thinkers in the early modern period, Newton believed that metals and minerals "vegetated" (i.e. grew) within the earth, the subterranean mineral veins corresponding to the branches of terrestrial trees. The artificial production of mineral dendrites provided a laboratory-based support to this theory, and promised to give further clues about the invisible processes of metallic generation and multiplication within the earth. It is conceivable that this part of the text could represent a digest of notes taken by Newton from a single source that he was reading. We know from other manuscripts, however, that Newton was in the habit of commonplacing his own thoughts and ruminations as well as those of others, sometimes in the form of numbered lists. 3

[1v-2r] After laying out some comparisons between the vegetation of metals and that of plants and animals, Newton then passes to a more specific discussion of the generation of minerals and salts. He begins with the observation that metals are dissolved by acidic liquors, whereupon they become "vitriols" (corresponding to modern sulfates) or salts. He then argues that a much more intimate compounding can occur when the subterranean metals are in a vaporous form. This leads Newton to a detailed theory of the formation of various salts, particularly niter (saltpeter, our potassium nitrate) and sea-salt. His leading idea is that niter forms when the metallic vapors combine directly with very subtle water vapor, whereas sea-salt originates when the metallic vapors combine with denser vapor or with liquid water. The combination of vapor to vapor yields a subtler, less fixed (i.e. more volatile or more subject to thermal decomposition) product such as niter, whereas the combination of denser water vapor and metallic vapor produces the "grosser," more fixed sea-salt. At the end of 2r, Newton argues in typically quantitative fashion that the continual generation of salts is confirmed by the fact they are constantly "washed down by the descent of water," and would therefore disappear from the earth's surface if they were not regenerated.

[2r-2v] In his ensuing discussion of niter, Newton draws on the popular early modern sal nitrum or "volatile niter" theory, which had reached its classic form in the works of the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636), who was a mining official, courtier, and favorite of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in Prague4. As Newton puts it, there exists in nature a niter-like spirit that is "the ferment of fire and all vegetables." This spirit, in other words, is a principle of combustion and of life itself, corresponding loosely to the modern element oxygen (and in fact potassium nitrate can be made to release oxygen upon heating). Newton contrasts this spirit with the niter of commerce, which he says is "most apt to take fire and most promoting vegetation of all salts." The allusion to niter's ability to take fire here is probably a reference to its use as an ingredient in gunpowder. Newton's links to the sal nitrum theory are further strengthened when he refers to the preservative effect that saltpeter exercises on meat and its ability to fertilize fields – these were standard themes in the tradition popularized by Sendivogius and his followers.

[3r-3v] In this section, Newton integrates contemporary ideas drawn ultimately from the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes, Kenelm Digby, and Robert Boyle with his interpretation of the sal nitrum theory 5. Hence he distinguishes between "gross mechanical transposition of parts" and vegetation, which occurs at a more intimate level of material composition. To some degree, Newton is here following an old alchemical tradition that made a distinction between "sophistical," or specious transmutation that merely involved the interchange of gross corpuscles, and genuine metallic transmutation, which was thought to involve the infiltration and substitution of extremely minute particles. But Newton's updating and expanding of alchemical concepts becomes still more apparent when he combines the sal nitrum theory with a mechanical explanation of gravity. Sendivogius had argued that there was a circulation of the volatile niter found within the earth such that it was driven up through the earth's surface and high into the atmosphere. In the higher reaches, the volatile niter acquired the virtues of the stars and planets, whereupon it returned to earth and acted as a universal principle of generation. Newton here enlarges on this idea by making an ethereal cognate to the volatile niter that is a principle not only of generation but of gravitation – as the ether returns to the earth, it is driven downwards at an incredible rate, and in its descent the ether carries down other bodies. Upon reaching the earth, the ether gradually becomes "condensed and interwoven with the bodies it meets there," acting as a "tender ferment" or active agency within matter. Interestingly, Newton suggests that the ether may be "intangled" with a spirit that is itself "the body of light." Sendivogius had argued that every body contains at its core a scintilla lucis, a "spark of light," that is 1/8200 of the body (whether by weight or by volume is unclear).

Newton follows these alchemically inspired theories with a succession of related headings concerning heat, light, fire, and the material properties of bodies, such as volatility and its opposite, fixity. These preliminary entries are followed by some interesting ruminations on the nature of God. Here Newton argues that God's power is constrained only by the laws of logic. He can do anything that we can imagine, provided that this does not imply a logical contradiction. Hence, Newton continues, God could have made a world vastly different from our own, if He only willed it. This passage is followed on 4v by more than a half-page of blank space, probably indicating that Newton hoped to fill it out further at some later date.

[5r-6r] The fascicle making up 5r-6v lacks the worm-holes present in the earlier parts of the manuscript: hence it may have originally been separated from them by a considerable quantity of text that is now missing. Folio 5r-6v may even have belonged originally to a manuscript entirely separate from the earlier parts of Smithsonian MS. Dibner 1031B. Nonetheless, the content of the English text at this point is closely related to that found earlier in the manuscript, especially at 3r, where Newton first distinguishes mechanism from vegetation. The English text at 5r-6r is taken up mostly with further attempts to distinguish between mechanical change and vegetation. Newton is keen here to show that human art or technology is not restricted to mere mechanical change. Instead, art may "promote" or encourage nature's fermentative or putrefying action so that genuine transmutation may be effected at the will of the human operator. This traditionally alchemical perspective is illustrated with examples such as the comparison between a wild tree and one grown in a garden. The latter is not rendered "artificial" merely because it has received the benefit of human care, and in a like manner the products of alchemical intervention, as long as they employ subtle processes such as fermentation, are still natural products 6 . In order to effect such radical changes as alchemy lays claim to, the chymist must employ "a more subtile secret & noble way of working" than mere mechanical transposition. Instead of working in this gross fashion, he must make use of a "vegetable spirit" diffused in the form of "seeds or seminall vessels" throughout the mass of the matter that it inhabits. Here, once again, we are in the realm of the sal nitrum theory, which had postulated the existence of a tiny, seedlike spark at the center of bodies that emanates a virtue or power responsible for qualitative difference and change. Once again, Newton is elaborating on ideas that he had inherited from early modern alchemy.

[6r-6v] The English text on 6r-6v is followed in the manuscript by a short text in Latin, written upside-down and from the other end of the fascicle. This part of the manuscript, unlike Of Natures obvious laws, has never before been published. Here we see a highly significant testament of Newton's chymical philosophy that remains up to now unedited, untranslated, and virtually unnoticed by Newton scholars.

The Latin text begins abruptly on 6v with the phrase "Humores minerales continuo decidunt," which Newton subsequently deleted. For the sake of convenience, we will refer to the treatise by that beginning phrase. The entire text of Humores minerales is riddled with the deletions, additions, and alterations that – along with its ideological parity with Of Natures obvious laws – make it very probable that it is a Newtonian composition rather than a mere transcript from another author. Despite its affinities with Of Natures obvious laws, however, the Latin text is a distinct treatise, possibly a preliminary and fragmentary working out of the ideas that Newton would develop further in the English part of the manuscript.

In Humores minerales we encounter a theory of metallic generation that is closely related to Of Natures obvious laws. In the English text, Newton based his theory of the continual generation of sea-salt and niter on the phenomenon of metals forming salts and vitriols when dissolved in acidic liquors. Newton also spoke in the English text of the subterranean fumes of metals that he believed combined with water vapors to form sea-salt and niter . Employing a quantitative argument very similar to his earlier ruminations about the regeneration of salts at 2r-2v, Newton points out in Humores minerales that the constant corrosion of the metals and their descent into the earth's core would soon exhaust their supply unless they underwent a regeneration like the one that he attributed to sea-salt and niter in the English part of the manuscript. The contrafactual depletion of metals therefore justifies Newton's belief that the metals must undergo a continual process of generation that offsets their corruption at the hands of subterranean corrosive liquors and vapors. His theory was inspired by the Arca arcani of an earlier alchemist, Johann Grasseus 7. Grasseus was a German lawyer and advisor to the prince-elector and archbishop of Cologne, Ernst von Bayern. Newton's version of the metallic generation theory takes the following form.

The fumes produced when the metals are broken down by subterranean corrosives rise up within the earth on account of their volatility, and then meet with further metalliferous solutions that are dripping down toward the earth's core. The more active spirits will then act on the less volatile, less active metallic solutions, causing them to putrefy and lose their "metallic form." The idea here is that the subtilized metals, which have themselves lost their ability to be reduced back into a metal, convert other metals into something similarly incapable of being brought back to a metallic nature by means of the mechanical processes known to "vulgar chymistry." Instead of being liberated, the metals are broken down, volatilized, and driven up within the earth, where they act on other metalliferous solutions in a less volatile form. We now learn that a metal that has been decomposed by subterranean putrefaction has a more volatile part and a more fixed part. Newton refers to the more volatile portion of the metal as its "mercury," and the less volatile portion becomes its "sulfur." Because the mercury has undergone a separation from its sulfur, the latter usually conceived as a hot, male principle, the mercury cannot develop into a full-blown metal. The more fixed sulfur, on the other hand, if it falls into the proper cavities within the earth, can be cooked into a metal independently by the action of the volatile metallic spirits. In accordance with the earlier paragraphs of Humores minerales, Newton says that such newly formed metals can themselves be volatilized and driven upwards within the earth by the same active spirits, especially "in the sign of Aries," presumably a reference to the season of spring, when the sun is found in the sign of the Ram.

The final lines of Humores minerales reveal that here too Newton had a version of the sal nitrum theory in the back of his mind. In describing the interaction of the sulfur and mercury, Newton says, "These two spirits above all wander over the earth and bestow life on animals and vegetables. And they make stones, salts, and so forth." Thus we have passed from a theory of mere metallic generation to one that is intended to explain the totality of life on earth, as well as the production of all mineral materials, not just metallic ones. This, once again, is the theory of everything that Newton acquired from alchemy, and that reached its most developed exposition in Of Natures obvious laws and the "Hypothesis of Light."