A New Light of Alchemy

15I therefore conclude that there is only one nature in metals as in other things, though her operation varies. There is also one universal matter, according to Hermes: thus all things are born from this one thing. Yet many artists each follow their own fancy. They seek a new nature and a new matter, and therefore discover a new and freshly made nothing. They interpret philosophers by written syllables rather than by nature's possibilities.

15.2All these belong to the assembly described in the Dialogue of Mercury with the Alchemist, who return home without a conclusion. They seek an end not merely without a middle but without a beginning. This happens because they try to attain the art from hearsay and quacks' recipes, rather than from foundations or reading philosophers' books—although envious people have perhaps already laid waste those books, adding or suppressing material in many places. Afterwards, when they do not succeed, they turn to sophistications and attempt marvellous but vain works: whitening, reddening, fixing silver and extracting gold's soul. The possibility of doing this was sufficiently denied in the preface to the little book of Twelve Treatises. I do not deny—indeed, I say it is altogether necessary—that the metallic soul must be extracted. But it must be for the philosophers' work, rather than a sophistical operation. Once extracted and purified, it must be returned to its own body, so that a true resurrection of the glorified body occurs. It has never been my contention that wheat can be multiplied without a grain of wheat. But know it to be utterly false that the extracted soul can tinge some other metal by a sophistical method; everyone who boasts of this is a falsifier. These things will be treated more fully under salt, the third principle. Here there is no place to write at length.