But now back to the subject. I also promised to explain how a poor, troubled practitioner should seek a middle thing when his operation comes to a standstill; I shall add this to conclude the chapter. If I put two things together and see that they will not conjoin, mix, or unite, I also see that a joining middle is lacking. Recognizing this, I pause and consider what subjects I have before me. If they are animal substances, I seek their own homogeneous counterpart within that kingdom. Suppose I had a subject containing no volatile part, such as bones, horn, or claws, but containing acid and alkali. I wish to give it a homogeneous volatile part: what should I take? Ask from what animal the bone, horn, or claw was taken. If you know and can obtain that animal, take its urine, flesh, dung, or fat, putrefy it, and distil its volatile part over in a water bath. You have thereby replaced the middle or the missing part. If that animal cannot be obtained, look for one possessing equal quality and power. If you cannot find it, take the subject in which all animal virtue and power is uniquely concentrated: the human being, who holds the powers of all animals hidden in his centre. Human urine or excrement can assist everywhere, whether volatile, acid, or alkali is lacking.

If this still does not suffice, return to universality, where all animal, vegetable, and mineral powers are concentrated, in subjects that associate homogeneously with every creature: rain, dew, and snow. These have their volatile, acid, and alkali; with them you can repair every deficiency. Putrefy rainwater, distil all its moisture off through a still, and rectify that moisture from its phlegm in a bath through a tall flask, in the customary manner. From the remaining part draw over all the phlegm until a honey-like thickness remains. Distil a vinegar from that thick material, and extract a salt or alkali from the dead head. As it is with animals, so it is with plants. In that kingdom, when one can proceed no further, one takes wine and its parts, in which all vegetable powers are concentrated; finally one turns to the universals, as above. So also in minerals. All white minerals are concentrated in alum, and all red ores and stars in vitriol. If these are insufficient and do not endure, turn to the more fixed universals, spirit of nitre and spirit of salt. Obtain the volatile from rainwater; spirit of nitre gives the acid, and spirit of salt the alkaline part. Here, then, you have a wide field in which to practise chymistry.

Each kingdom has its own property and particular quality, by which the kingdoms are distinguished from one another and by which extremes and middles are distinguished within them; through these, their contrariety must be turned into homogeneity. Animals and minerals are the two extremes, with the vegetable kingdom between. If mineral and animal are to become homogeneous, this cannot happen pleasantly except through their middle, the vegetable. Conversely, the animal kingdom cannot become homogeneous with the mineral without the vegetable. A chymist who wants his work to be useful should therefore proceed with understanding, mixing animals first with the intermediaries, the vegetables, before mixing them with minerals. Nor should he mix the animal volatile with vegetable alkali: let like be put with like, animal volatile with vegetable volatile, and animal acid conjoined with vegetable acid. Once they are united, he must again use reason, bringing these joined volatile parts first to acid and only afterward to alkali. Then he will obtain a proper yield; otherwise he suffers loss everywhere. The practitioner sees how one thing passes into another in the finest order, not confusedly, as many plunge into the art without consideration, but with reasons and middles duly observed.

For example, I wish to dissolve gold and attempt its dissolution from the highest degree down to the lowest. I believe gold can be dissolved without a corrosive, even with water alone, if it has first been tortured with all manner of mercurial additions and brought into a saline nature: then even well water dissolves it without any addition. Such people do not understand what gold is, much less its origin; nor do they understand what a corrosive is or why minerals are generally treated with corrosives. Now I wish to dissolve gold. I beat it into the thinnest leaf and pour upon it spirit of urine from the animal kingdom as the volatile. Suppose it does not attack it; I add spirit of wine. Still it does not attack: I pour on animal acid, but it is too weak. I add vegetable acid; still no attack. The practitioner sees that these things are not homogeneous but extremes: a middle is lacking that has grown from and out of gold’s nature. I therefore go into the mineral kingdom as its proper domain, take spirit or oil of vitriol, pour it on, and boil them well together. This does not attack either, but extracts only the colour and leaves the gold white. Someone may wonder why: all animal, vegetable, and mineral solvents have been applied, yet nothing is achieved. The reason is that spirit or oil of vitriol is an extreme in relation to gold: spirit of vitriol or sulphur is the most volatile thing in the mineral kingdom, whereas gold is the most fixed.

The practitioner now sees that the saying is true: one extreme cannot be joined to another without a middle. Someone who has not thoroughly explored the mines will ask: “What middle does gold have between itself and oil of vitriol? Is not vitriol the first matter of the red stars? Do not first and last matter love each other?” This is true, but not without a middle. I shall show and demonstrate the great, wide difference between gold and gold. Do you know that gold is smelted from ores? Do you know how small a quantity of gold is smelted and extracted from an ore, and how great a quantity is thrown away? If you know this, I shall faithfully and sincerely reveal briefly the means and middles between vitriol and gold. Count vitriol or sulphur as the first matter of gold and as one extreme—I do not mean iron or copper vitriol here, but solar vitriol, and so forth. I count gold as the last matter and the other extreme. Between them lie these middles. After vitriol or sulphur comes arsenic. Understand: through long digestion vitriol becomes sulphur, changes its combustibility and inflammability, yet is not fixed, but becomes a volatile mercurial arsenic. Through further digestion this arsenic becomes a marcasite, the proximate matter of metal or gold.

Marcasite is finally cooked into a metal, for all marcasites, according to their kind, contain a fixed grain of metal, one more than another, whereas sulphur and arsenic fly away or pass into slag. The more fixed or alkaline its bodies become, and the more stringent the acid of vitriol and sulphur becomes, the nobler and more metallic it is. Gold shows this: it is the most fixed alkalized body and so compact that no acid will attack it. The acid would sooner consume itself to death upon it and increase all its virtues. Therefore, if one wished to dissolve gold with spirit of vitriol, one would first have to make the gold into a marcasite, then back into arsenic, then again into sulphur- and vitriol-pyrites, or vitriol. Then spirit of vitriol would immediately dissolve its like at the root and carry it wholly into a liquor with itself; otherwise it would not. Although gold dissolves in alkaline-acid menstruums, it can nevertheless be separated from them and reduced to its former condition, a fixed body. Here, however, when gold is brought back—as will be explained further below—into its first, vitriolic matter and from there into a liquor, it has returned to its origin and become a mineral vapour. For this liquor passes over as vapour.

If gold has been brought this far and a person wished to take it into the body, it would be contrary to him, for it is still mineral and corrosive. To make it homogeneous with animal nature, he must again seek a middle lying between the animal and mineral kingdoms: the vegetable. Since a human being cannot consume a mineral but is nourished chiefly from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, he must bring gold into a vegetable nature and then turn this vegetable nature into an animal one. Through middles the mineral kingdom thus becomes agreeable and homogeneous with the animal kingdom, as I have sufficiently shown. One must always proceed from one middle to another up to the highest, rather than immediately bringing an extremely volatile thing to the most fixed. My teaching will repel and astonish some when I speak of arsenic and of preparing gold with it. Yet when they prepare it with living mercury, which differs little from arsenic, or with mercury, sublimate, or the strongest corrosives of aqua regia—those, of course, are no poisons and do people no harm at all! Perhaps sublimate is weaker than arsenic in their eyes, though I know it is sharper. Sulphur, too, is entirely free of arsenic, although it always carries arsenic with it and arsenic comes from it. The corrosives are likewise so sweet and mild that they cannot attack the stomach: what wonderfully suitable preparations they all are!

I shall add another stroke for the lover of the art, so that he may see through the darkness with clear eyes. I have said that gold is born from vitriol, sulphur, and arsenic-marcasite. Whoever wishes to turn gold regularly back into vitriol must drive it back with the very principles through which gold itself grew; otherwise he faces irksome trouble and labour. I shall take other principles rather than gold’s own, from which everyone will know how to seek the proper ones. Take what is called the arsenical stone, fused into one mass from equal parts sulphur, arsenic, and antimony. Take one lot of it to one quint of gold. Let the stone melt very gently, but heat the gold to an extreme glow and put the glowing gold into the molten mass. It will immediately mix and become a brittle mass; repeatedly reverberated with sulphur, this will become quite open like iron, and can afterward readily be dissolved with any acid. Let each person now examine these portions of sulphur, orpiment, and antimony. For antimony is a noble marcasite: its ore always shows one grain of gold and silver in its assay. Give an animal a mass made from these—for everyone knows antimony and orpiment are poisons—and see how much harm it does, even if one gives half a quarter or a quarter. Sulphur removes all poison from antimony.