245. What is lost when an ore is considered only after smelting?

246. How does the author qualify the claim that metals consist of mercury, sulphur and salt?

247. Why does he distinguish running mercury from a universal mercurial principle?

248. What is the role of the stony matrix in the generation and fixation of a metal?

249. How can the same acid be described as making a substance more fixed in one setting and more volatile in another?

250. What limits does the author place on art’s ability to imitate nature exactly?

Book II Chapter 1 How Nature Reduces the Altered Chaotic Principles, Nitre and Salt, to Their First State: That Is, How She Makes Them Vapour Again

Read with: II.1.

251. How does Book II reverse the direction followed in Book I?

252. Why can dissolution be called a return without becoming the complete erasure of a thing?

253. What survives the loss of a specified bodily form in the author’s account?

254. How does the first chapter connect death with the nourishment of another creature?

255. What part does the circulation of the elements play in the return of bodies?

256. Why must a reader distinguish the destruction of a form from the annihilation of matter?

257. Which claims depend on the author’s cosmology rather than on a particular experiment?

258. How does the chapter prepare the distinction between natural and artificial dissolution?

259. What changes when a reader follows the chain upward rather than downward?

260. Which passage best links the two books’ accounts of generation and corruption?

Book II Chapter 2 How Nature Destroys Animals

Read with: II.2.

261. How does animal putrefaction illustrate the departure of the balsamic life-spirit?

262. What does the author believe happens when maggots and flies appear in decaying animal matter?

263. How should a reader distinguish that historical explanation from the observation that insects are present?

264. What role do volatile and fixed portions play in the account of the animal’s return?

265. Why does the destruction of one animal lead the author toward vegetable generation?

266. How are nourishment and excrement connected with this process?

267. What remains of the animal’s former specification after its bodily structure changes?

268. Which earlier passage about animal generation helps explain the author’s account of animal death?

269. How does this chapter make corruption part of a productive natural order?

270. What question would you ask the author to distinguish competing explanations of the insects he describes?

Book II Chapter 3 How Nature Destroys Plants

Read with: II.3.

271. How do moisture and heat begin the decay of a withered plant in this account?

272. What role does the plant’s innate acid play in its destruction?

273. How does the author explain insects found in decaying vegetable matter?

274. What evidence would distinguish that explanation from another account of their arrival?

275. Why does the decay of a tree require attention to both internal and external causes?

276. What does the chapter mean by natural calcination?

277. How is compost used to connect ordinary cultivation with the general theory of corruption?

278. Why does the author describe rainwater as a ferment?

279. What does the phrase translated as an unalterable predestination add to the account of natural order?

280. How do the volatile and acid portions cooperate in the return of vegetable matter?

Book II Chapter 4 How Nature Destroys, Corrupts, and Alters Minerals

Read with: II.4.

281. How do the two seeds explain the generation of all three kingdoms at the start of this chapter?

282. How are the sun and moon aligned with active and receptive principles?

283. What makes the destruction of a stone intelligible within the same theory as animal or plant decay?

284. How does art accelerate a process the author attributes to nature?

285. Why does the distinction between an ore in its matrix and a refined metal matter?

286. How does nourishment become an argument for the possibility of metallic transformation?

287. What objection does the Aristotelian interlocutor raise, and how is it answered?

288. What explanatory work is done by the analogy of bone marrow?

289. How is a metallic tincture connected with the idea of medicine?

290. Where does the chapter move from ordinary weathering to a more ambitious claim about transmutation?

Book II Chapter 5 the Anatomy or Separation Conjunction and Regeneration of Chaotic Water Into a Quintessence

Read with: II.5.

291. Why does the author choose regenerated chaotic water as the first subject of artificial anatomy?

292. What does the division into volatile, middle and fixed portions make visible?

293. How are the four elements connected with the twelve degrees of rectification?

294. Why must separation be followed by a carefully ordered reunion?

295. What does philosophical calcination mean within this long argument?

296. How does the circulation of a spirit through its own earth connect theory with practice?

297. Why does the author call the resulting harmony a quintessence or universal magistery?

298. How do the criticisms of failed work qualify the promises made for the operation?

299. What claims about charcoal, dregs or residue challenge a reader’s first idea of a purified product?

300. How are the later particular anatomies expected to follow this universal example?

Book II Chapter 6 What Is Finally to Be Concluded From the Preceding Long Chapter

Read with: II.6.

301. Why does the author supply a separate chapter of conclusions after the long universal operation?

302. What order of preparation, separation and reunion does he want the reader to retain?

303. How are volatile, acid, oil, coal, ash and alkali distinguished?

304. Why is reading and judgment presented as a condition of appropriate practice?

305. How does a homogeneous water differ in its relation to soft and hard bodies?

306. What changes when the general rule is applied to a mineral subject?

307. How does the author describe an ascent through the three kingdoms?

308. Why is a rule useful without becoming a single identical procedure for every material?

309. Which caution in this chapter most clearly limits a literal imitation of the preceding account?

310. How does the chapter connect the universal anatomy with the three particular anatomies that follow?

Book II Chapter 7 the Anatomy of Animals

Read with: II.7.

311. How does the author connect putrefaction with the opening of animal matter?

312. What place do the reported apparitions occupy in his account of animal life and dissolution?

313. How should their evidential status be distinguished from that of a separation into visible products?

314. How are volatile spirit, vinegar, oil and coal related in the anatomy of a liquid animal subject?

315. Why does the order of reunion matter, and what part does phlegm play?

316. What changes when the subject is a hard animal part rather than a fluid?

317. How do nature and art differ in the ends toward which their operations tend?

318. Why does the author worry about retaining oil rather than losing it during purification?

319. What practical problem is addressed by his discussion of preparing material in quantity?

320. How does vinegar serve as a mediator in the transition toward the vegetable anatomy?

Book II Chapter 8 the Anatomy of Plants

Read with: II.8.

321. How does the author distinguish soft vegetable subjects from hard ones?

322. What does the varying proportion of principles reveal about differences among plants?

323. How are the claimed medicinal properties connected with those proportions?

324. What is meant by the volatile vegetable salt in this account?

325. Why does reunion require more than placing the separated portions together?

326. How may missing principles be supplied from universal subjects, according to the author?

327. What relationship does this proposal establish between a particular plant and the wider natural economy?

328. Why does the chapter identify principal subjects for the three kingdoms?

329. How is a subtle oil distinguished from accidental differences among vegetable materials?

330. Which comparison with the animal anatomy makes the vegetable chapter easier to understand?

Book II Chapter 9 the Anatomy of Minerals

Read with: II.9.

331. How does the author explain the particular difficulty of work on minerals and metals?

332. Why does the chapter distinguish several kinds of corrosive or penetrating spirit?

333. How does the sequence of intermediate mineral materials support the larger argument?

334. What is the danger of assuming that one historical symbol always names the same material?

335. How do fixation and volatility depend on the relation between materials rather than on a name alone?

336. What would count, for the author, as a merely superficial dissolution?

337. How does the discussion of mineral substances revise the account of their generation in Book I?

338. Where does the author appeal to experience, and how specific is the evidence offered?

339. Which uncertain reading in the notes most affects your understanding of the passage around it?

340. What does this chapter reveal about the practical limits of the book’s promise of a universal method?

Book II Chapter 10 the Tree of Dulcification and the Mineral Arcanum

Read with: II.10.

341. What does dulcification mean here beyond the everyday idea of making something sweet?

342. How does the opening tree organise volatile, acid and alkaline branches?

343. Why are animal and vegetable spirits placed beside mineral corrosive materials?

344. What relationship does the diagram assert that its printed words alone might leave obscure?

345. How does the author describe the moderation of an excessively active material?

346. Why should dulcification be read in relation to the earlier account of media?

347. What must remain active if moderation is not to become simple destruction?

348. Which sensory descriptions carry explanatory weight in this chapter?

349. How does the diagram change when read as a map of relations rather than as a modern classification?

350. Where does the argument move from an observed alteration to a claim about medicinal suitability?

Book II Chapter 11 Chapter XI and Last: On the Alkahest, or Alka Est

Read with: II.11.

351. What problem is the Alkahest meant to solve within the argument of the two books?

352. How does the author distinguish a universal power from an indiscriminate action on everything?

353. What earlier account of seed, specification or medium helps explain this distinction?