As to the second objection, it was shown above that water was created first, and rainwater with it, within that great mass of water first created; moreover, rainwater was not afterwards changed in itself. We therefore possess the remote matter sufficiently in rainwater. From it, in turn, we can readily obtain the supposed proximate matter. For when rainwater is allowed to putrefy for its proper time, it deposits a slime and an earth.

If we then proceed with it by removing superfluities and otherwise working philosophically, according to the account given not only in Part One but also in this second part, especially Chapter Two, we shall undoubtedly reach a successful conclusion with God’s help. We must also bear in mind that this is an earth that has hovered above our heads.

Moreover, Bernard himself writes in one place: “When we say that we take all things for our work, we mean the elements.” His opinion quoted above must therefore not be understood according to the letter.

Concerning the third objection, we must first know that earth and water possess animal and vegetable nature only potentially, as was also suggested to some extent in Chapter One above. This is precisely the tohu va bohu about which scholars still dispute so much and which they often interpret so differently.

For neither earth nor water brought forth any plant or animal in the creation until God the Lord said: “Let the earth bring forth grass and seed-bearing plants, and fruitful trees, each bearing fruit according to its kind and having its own seed within itself upon the earth.” Again: “Let the water teem with moving, living creatures, and with birds that fly above the earth under the firmament of heaven.” Further: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures, each according to its kind.”

Through these words God the Lord gave and implanted in water and earth the blessing, the command and the activity by which to bring forth these creatures. At the same time he gave the creatures a particular life, together with a definite law and order of nature, so that all the creatures then immediately stirred into being and brought forth in their perfection from earth and water by God’s word and command should thereafter multiply and propagate through their own seed.

Consequently, we human beings cannot create such creatures from the elements, from either water or earth, or bring them into being by art. We can neither alter nature and the Most High’s holy order nor impart and speak into the elements such an agency and activity as Almighty God does, any more than we can create the elements from nothing.

Yet, secondly, the following inference is entirely invalid: we cannot, in the manner just described, produce grass, plants or animals from the elements, from either water or earth; therefore we cannot prepare a tincture from them or with it tincture imperfect metals into perfect gold.

For, thirdly, creating and bringing things into being—or presuming to alter nature and God’s order, as foolish and unwise common alchemists and laboratory workers do—is one thing. Preparing, tincturing and proceeding in accordance with nature is another.

Fourthly, nowhere in Holy Scripture do we read that our Lord God created minerals through a particular word spoken in the creation, or gave and implanted in them a particular life and a seed of their own, as he did in animals and plants. Hence de Nuysement rightly says: “Minerals possess neither a sensitive nor a vegetative faculty, but live only with an essential life.” Experience nevertheless testifies that minerals are generated in the earth through God’s providence and brought out for human necessities. We must therefore conclude that through God’s universal Word, water and the elements possess mineral nature not only potentially but also actually.

That metals arise from the elements at the very first, without any seed of their own, as already stated, is confirmed not only by the aforementioned Dr Dienheim, who writes: “Metals are generated from the elements in the first instance without any seed or proximate matter.” It is also proved by the last example of the silver mine and its second liquation; by the example of the emerald; and by another example concerning a grain of gold obtained from the same water from which the emerald was made. This too will be related below, in the next chapter.

The philosophers accordingly investigated this generation of every metal from water and the elements. They likewise discovered that the metals differ only in perfection and imperfection, and observed that gold in particular reaches its maturity in the earth very slowly. They therefore considered how they might advance that maturation through art.

Through diligent and sustained reflection, these philosophers discovered various ways by which they brought the essence of gold to the highest maturity or, according to Bernard himself, subjected the elements—or water—to equal balancing. With their so-called stone they afterwards tinctured all imperfect metals into pure gold, accomplishing in one hour what nature otherwise could not effect in the earth in many hundreds of years.

This, then, is the Hermetic art, always so highly praised by the wise, yet never praised enough, and utterly despised and ridiculed by the unwise. This is the Hermetic making of gold: in accordance with nature, rather than supernatural, as some dream it to be.