A New Light of Alchemy

2Noble nature likewise works continually until she reaches the Iliadum itself, that is, the final limit; then she rests. From the beginning a certain promise was implanted in nature: by completing her course she could attain better things and enjoy complete rest. She strives toward this with all her powers and rejoices in her end, like an ageing ant, for which nature creates wings in old age. Our own ingenuity has certainly advanced so far, especially in the philosophical art or practice of the stone, that we have now almost reached the Iliadum itself. The art of chymistry has discovered subtleties so great that scarcely greater ones can be found. It differs from the art of the ancient philosophers as a clockmaker differs from an ordinary blacksmith. Although both work with iron, neither would know the other’s tasks, even though each is a master of his own art. If Hermes himself, the father of philosophers, returned to life today, together with the subtle-minded Geber and the most profound Raymond Lull, our chymists would regard them as pupils rather than philosophers. They would not know the many distillations now in use, the many circulations and calcinations, and the innumerable other operations of practitioners that people of this age have discovered and devised from their writings. We lack only one thing: knowing what they actually made—the philosophers’ stone, or physical tincture. While searching for it, we discover other things. Had human procreation not become so familiar, and did nature not maintain her own jurisdiction in it, we would by now scarcely fail to go astray even there.