Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

But because Nature cannot by herself attain the perfection of this union and digestion, neither can she altogether save or protect bodies from final destruction. Considering these things, the ingenuity of art, which has always surpassed her—although guided by her and unable to do anything by itself—has sought to imitate and exceed her by following the very course of her own path. Seeing that in all bodies the preservation and prolongation of life came through something tending towards fixation, which itself proceeded by union and digestion—for nothing can be fixed unless it is homogeneous and of a single nature—the artist devised and practised a way of finding that same fixable thing and bringing it to perfect fixation by Nature’s own paths, order and operation. This means separating foreign parts and uniting homogeneous ones through a long and skilful digestion of the things united. But there was no way of separating or extracting it from individual bodies already determined to a species, because of their compact union and the digestion already too far advanced within them. The artist therefore had to seek it in the womb of the mother that brings it forth: namely the earth, from which all things proceed. To draw it from elsewhere with its entire and original power would be a futile undertaking and utterly impossible; to think of restoring that power to it would be a long and very doubtful labour. This rightly made a certain poet say: Here, or nowhere, is what we seek.