The more fixed portion passes partly into slag containing the stony matrix, which causes a substantial part of the regulus also to become slag and glass. The regulus settling beneath the slag is partly marcasitic and partly metallic. Refining drives the marcasite away from the metal, leaving the metal behind. The many authors who called antimony the root or first matter of metal were therefore partly not entirely wrong, especially if by antimony they understood marcasites or a marcasitic kind. Otherwise, antimony is a marcasite arrested through lack of greater maturation. In this way a chymical philosopher can reach his goal sooner: the volatile always goes first in the fire, and the more fixed part follows. We stated above that metals are born from vapour—from a saline, spiritual vapour, or spiritual salt—and added that this is a corrosive. I shall first repeat what I did above and remind the reader again that everything is born from salt, and in its final resolution everything is reduced again into nitre and salt.

Since this is known, I say that these salts are also found mixed in the earth’s centre. The central fire ferments them and drives them upward into a volatile vapour. Because that vapour consists of nitre and salt, I might almost call it the macrocosm’s aqua regia, the royal water from which minerals originate. But I leave the naming to each chymist: let him call it what he wishes. Some call it mercurial and sulphurous vapour: nitre is mercury and salt is sulphur. Here, however, is a knot: I have said that nature ferments and makes dissolved salts corrosive. This is a point against which the whole world cries out. Chymists generally want to hear nothing of corrosives; they want everything sweet and gentle. Yet very few possess this treasure of sweetening and its method. This is what the whole world disputes. How shall I prove it against all resistance, when the whole world opposes it and, according to their reasoning and that of ordinary laboratory workers, no naturally occurring corrosive is found in or upon the earth?

I answer: I have proved above that salty waters rise again as vapour from the earth’s centre into the inward parts of mountains, attach themselves, eat themselves to death upon the earth, coagulate, and become fixed. Together with the earth they thus become a greasy, dirty Gur: acid dissolves earth, and earth coagulates acid. If a practitioner admits only that salty vapours rise, he must acknowledge that this salt is a dissolved salt. All chymists call such a dissolved salt spirit of salt or nitre. If it is spirit of salt and nitre, as it is, they themselves say and acknowledge that it is corrosive, especially when these spirits have been separated from all phlegm and earth and rectified. The more they are separated from wateriness, the more corrosive they are; the more wateriness accompanies them, the less the corrosive is noticed. Pour one pound of spirit of salt and nitre into a bucket of water and see how much corrosiveness is perceived. People take a few drops of these spirits into the body in a spoonful of water or another vehicle, which already moderates their corrosiveness. Why, then, should the enormous quantity of water in the earth not dampen and conceal the sharpness of such corrosives so that it is not noticed?

Conversely, concentrate the bucket of water containing the corrosive by evaporating its water, and the corrosive will be perceived increasingly sharply. The quantity of water therefore makes the corrosive imperceptible. This neatly blinds the gentlemen of the brotherhood of doubting Thomas, leading them away from the true ground and principal foundation so that they never discover nature’s true principles. As soon as such corrosive vapours reach earth or stone, they attach themselves, attack the earth by dissolving it, and thereby become corporeal as a vitriolic or aluminous salt. Operation can prove this. Take any corrosive—spirit of nitre, salt, or aqua regia—and throw into it an earth it can attack. The sharpness will enter and adhere to the earth; the earth is dissolved and the corrosive coagulated. This becomes apparent if the moisture is evaporated to a third and the remainder placed in a cellar: it will crystallize into a vitriolic salt or crystal according to the kind and form of the earth. This vitriol shows that the corrosive has eaten itself to death upon the earth by dissolving it.

The practitioner will also see that even the best-dephlegmated corrosive still contains superfluous wateriness. After it has dissolved the earth, distil its moisture through the alembic into the receiver: you will receive a sweet, insipid water. Or, if there was too little earth and the corrosive could have dissolved more, some corrosive will pass over, but so weakened compared with the original that it is almost pure, clear water. Vitriol itself shows that vitriol and Gur are made by the universal corrosive of nitre and salt, with these not in a corporeal state but spiritual and dissolved. Let a practitioner treat an earth however he wishes with a salt that is a body rather than a spirit: he will never produce such a vitriolic nature from it. Yet he can do so with any acid or dissolved salt, or saline spirit of nitre, salt, vitriol, sulphur, or alum, indeed with any sharp rectified vegetable vinegar. Its reduction to the first state must prove that this is true and that mineral Gur is made from corrosives. Distil such Gur or the vitriol leached from it and see whether it does not yield a corrosive water. Whatever something springs from is what it must again be resolved and reduced into: “From that which a thing is made, into that it is again resolved.” Minerals are generated from corrosives and reduced again into corrosives.

Distil vitriol-pyrites, sulphur-pyrites, alum ore, or another ore, and you will always obtain a corrosive liquor, whether much or little. To recognize the principles of metals, a practitioner must not consider them only as they appear to us already smelted: fire has separated away most of their primordial substance. Let him instead take their ores as they come from the mountains, untouched by fire, and he will learn the difference. Take such Gur, vitriol-pyrites, sulphur-pyrites, arsenic ore, orpiment ore, alum ore, antimony ore, and so forth, and distil with the strongest fire. Everywhere he will find a little or much corrosive water. The more open a metal is and the nearer it remains to Gur, the more such water it yields, for fixation drives almost all superfluous moisture from metals, making them resistant to fire and nearly imperishable. The less moisture a metal has, the more permanent it is. Superfluous recolaceous moisture is an instrument of the world-spirit. As long as it remains in and with that spirit, it repeatedly rouses the spirit to act, since it cannot act in dry things as it does in moist ones. Because of their superfluous recolaceous moisture, animals and plants are continually subject to alteration and instability: scarcely do they grow before they pass toward destruction. So too with minerals that still carry such moisture, though they are far more enduring than plants and animals—for example iron, copper, lead, antimony, and bismuth.

Seeing how quickly animals and plants decay and change, one faster than another, the ancient philosophers were moved to seek this balsamic life-spirit and world-spirit in minerals, where they found it concentrated in abundance. Everything in each mineral—stone, skin, and bone—is the world-spirit or life-spirit coagulated and fixed. But seeing that some minerals too are unstable and not enduring, they chose those they found most lasting: gold, silver, and nearly all precious stones. They awarded these the prize for sustaining their short lives. Since precious stones were obtainable only in small quantities, they remained with gold and silver and prepared medicines for long life from them. Every practitioner should observe, however, that just as minerals can naturally expel superfluous moisture, the practitioner can separate it further by art—not only in minerals, but also in animals, plants, and indeed universal subjects. When he anatomizes, separates, and rectifies these subjects, he sees how all the superfluous recolaceous phlegm readily separates through rectification, while the spirit is concentrated, grows sharp, and can be driven into so narrow a compass and become so powerful that it cannot be taken into the body without harm except in the smallest dose, as I shall explain in the second book on the anatomy and corruption of things.

The reader therefore has no need, unless he wishes, to run to minerals, plants, or animals to prepare a means of medicating, conserving, preserving, and prolonging his life: he can turn to himself. His own urine and excrement are powerful enough to prepare the most splendid medicine for himself and his neighbour and contain as good a world-spirit as gold, silver, and the carbuncle itself. Only separate the surplus moisture and reunite the principles. If it is still moist, draw that off in the water bath, and at the bottom you will find a treasure for your health above all treasures. Against all objections, everyone can see that an actual corrosive is found in the earth. Sulphur, through its sharpness, corrodes, drives, and chases imperfect metals—especially iron and copper—back into first matter. Does its smell not bite the nose as sharply as any corrosive? Does it not violently attack the lungs, so that prolonged coughing and spitting can scarcely sweeten and expel it enough? Is it not a far subtler corrosive in the dry than in the liquid state, as the difference between it and vitriol, as its oil, shows? It has a subtle, penetrating acid that a person who does not attend closely cannot believe.