Consider further, speaking first of universals: although rainwater is very closely related to the subject of the Hermetic art—as I know from a remarkable experience related to me by an eminent physician—one cannot treat the one philosophically with the other, or the other with the one, nor treat either with any similar thing; still less can one fix them in that way. Otherwise one must experience what Antonius de Abbatia writes: “If some obtain the right matter—and they are very few—they nevertheless mix it in such a way that they spoil and destroy it,” and so forth.

To offer some particular examples, I know of three different persons who laboured fruitlessly in this manner for a long time. One was a close relative of mine, another was considered and reputed to be a good philosopher, and the third was the physician already mentioned.

This physician further told me that another man had used dew with the subject of the Hermetic art, but likewise failed to achieve a proper result. He himself had added a certain earth to rainwater and, by his own account, extracted the principles in such a way that they united with bodily gold and silver. Nevertheless, by his own admission, he could not succeed in the second operation or bring the work to perfection. The sole cause was that they had neither rightly understood and considered nature nor known, understood or observed the true principles of natural philosophy.

Turning to particulars, we ourselves see that no plant is generated or begotten from an animal, nor any animal from a plant. Each nature again maintains its order: a horse does not give birth to a cow, a cow to an ass, an ass to a pig, a pig to a goat, a goat to a sheep, or a sheep to a dog. Likewise, cabbage does not grow from lettuce seed, radish from cabbage seed, or a pear tree from an apple pip. The Lord Christ himself says: “Can grapes be gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?” Finally, no animal or plant can be produced from a mineral.

Those who expect to seek and find the so-called seed of metals and the physical tincture in such particulars—including the minerals and metals just mentioned—therefore err still more. As was proved above in the first part by thoroughly sufficient authorities and reasons, preparing a universal medicine necessarily requires a universal matter. It was likewise explained that resolving or reducing particulars to first matter and universal principles is impossible.

It is also the case, as will be demonstrated more fully below, that minerals and metals have no particular seed, but spring directly from the elements at their first beginning. They do not grow, seed themselves or beget their like. On this subject the late French poet wrote the following verses, as reported by Dr Dienheim:

Let people therefore not boast And repeat this notable saying: “Everything produces its like.” Of minerals this is wrongly said, Though truly of plants, And truly of creatures with sensation. For these take nourishment; They seed and plant themselves. Metals never feel anything, And are as great in their final year As they are in their first. They take their being from the elements, By nature, in the earthly element.

It is therefore clear and evident that metals cannot be transformed or improved through any particular seed, or through anything other than the universal seed or nature, namely the elements. In them alone is true gold found, still in its growing root, to speak or write in the language of inferior astronomy. This is indeed the cornerstone against which so many thousands have stumbled throughout their lives: they have fallen into the false belief and error of ascribing an individual seed to minerals and metals, as to animals and plants.

Even today ordinary alchemists and laboratory workers undertake to seek that seed of metals and the physical tincture in the metals and minerals so often mentioned, and even in animals and plants—seeking strength in the weak and power in the powerless. Yet more than a hundred years ago Count Bernard of Treviso offered himself as an example, testifying from his own experience that he had worked fruitlessly for many, many years upon such particulars, spending and consuming a considerable part of his estate and incurring his friends’ contempt, until at last, in old age, study of the philosophical books brought him to recognize his error.

Likewise in our own time Henrich von Baßdorff, drawing upon his own experience, described five particular false paths fully and in detail: those proceeding from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and Mercury. He plainly and sincerely told us, as a warning, that despite the excellent appearances he found, especially in the last of these subjects, he could achieve his purpose in it no more than in the others.

These alchemists and laboratory workers sufficiently reveal that they lack an understanding of nature. They will therefore never be able to attain a proper result, but must remain perpetually caught in their error. For Sendivogius’s saying is unfailingly true: “Without the light and knowledge of nature, it is impossible to attain this art.”