Finally, a small scruple may arise concerning the separation of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Someone may say: 'He has mentioned most principles, yet misses one or another. For when animals and plants are distilled for their volatile, whether in a water bath or in the still, a delicate oil also comes over with the volatile spirit. He has left this out and said nothing about it.' Answer: I said above that the more a thing is opened and subtilized, the subtler and more volatile it becomes. What is any burning spirit but a highly expanded oil, a highly volatilized, dissolved saltpetre, or a seed of burning nitre? I have preached to weariness that volatile and fixed, acid and alkali, together with the volatile, are wholly undistinguished in respect of essence. They differ only accidentally, according to whether something has been made volatile or fixed; accordingly they acquire a distinguishing term, or a distinction of terms. Materially, however, they are one and the same, each and all. Let no one scruple over such things. Even if a he-goat should be the very first thing to come over, throw it back upon its fixed part in conjunction, to rectify and coagulate it through that part. Such scruples have prevented many from reaching the centre, because they thought: 'Hold! This must be something heterogeneous, or a part rejected by nature herself; it does not belong here,' and so forth. In this way they discarded the best, kept the rubbish in their hands, and gave the better part they had separated to the pigs.

But I tell you that everything nature has compounded, whether poison or theriac, is good. A true chymist will always make poison into theriac, rather than theriac into poison, and bring it to good. What nature has left unripe, poisonous, and crude, the practitioner must ripen. It is well known that mineral, vegetable, and animal poisons are mostly volatile, crude, and immature; once made fixed, they are no longer poisons, but antidotes and alexipharmics. What nature has begun and left unperfected therefore remains for the human being to perfect: to contemplate and marvel at the millions of God's wonderful and varied works, to humble himself to nothing in view of his father's condition, and to thank the God of all gods for allowing him to know his wonders, see them with his eyes, and touch and grasp them with his hands. With this, the matter too is complete. Let us turn to the mineral kingdom, the subject most eagerly desired at present.