Do not therefore rejoice so greatly over human perfection and beautiful adornment, when the human being strives against a form as noble as the soul and changes so variously against reason. Concern yourself only with your works, not with our defects and vices. Have you never thought you had begun and completed your work well, when in the end it turned out otherwise, like a monstrosity? Is this a defect in your understanding and wisdom, or could you not do otherwise? I ask you to forgive me if I speak too harshly of your science. I do not intend to kill you; I merely feel the severity of the reminder you gave me concerning my ignorance. Not an hour passes without my thinking of the high thing of which you have informed me, and increasingly so when I consider the lofty things you have explained and the errors of mine you have exposed. Whether I lie down, walk or stand, it is before my eyes. In short, I cannot fully conceive what matter and form I must take at the beginning. You have scolded me severely for not following your path, yet you know well that my understanding is insufficient for this. In this art I can only act against you unless you assist me by the power of your knowledge. You say truly that your secrets and high works are not given to human beings to know. How shall I make progress under such a burden and guide myself unless you help me? You say I should follow you, and I desire to do so; but tell me by what means and books. One says to take this and that; another says to leave it. Their words are twisted in different ways and set in figurative sayings. In the end I see that I can learn nothing from them. Therefore I take refuge in you and ask you to advise and help me concerning what I should do in this weighty work. I ask and beg you from the bottom of my heart to tell me, upon your conscience, how it is possible to enter the earth’s depths and diligently seek the perfect Mercury of the metals. Anyone who found this, or at least the Mercury of gold alone, might well keep it as a treasure. Yet even if someone already possessed it, I doubt whether they could make a metal from it. I do not believe a person is so rational and skilful as to make gold. It is your work alone, as experience shows and as you demonstrated when speaking of human generation.

We see clearly that cold and moist Mercury desires the assistance of its sulphur. This is a uniform seed, or homogeneous semen, from which the creature arises when the work is completed. When I consider everything, I find that you take the proper matter, proper vessel, proper ore, proper place and proper fire to impart the form, shape and colour, life and growth with which each thing is filled. As a mistress of the work you know the worth of the matter, for the agent receives no operation within itself, but only in the disposed patient. You know subtly how to mingle warm and cold, dry and moist, and draw in the contrary quality by which you change the first form so that matter assumes a new one. For according to power and potentiality, the object is a subject that continually preserves in actuality and operation the substance that previously existed only potentially. I have indeed heard you speak of these things; if only I could recount your meaning rightly and speak of them properly according to your power. I have understood your statement that the elixir begins from the four elements, that contrary things unite, and that one must turn the elements. This is certainly no human handiwork. For who can know how the earthly quality takes its being with air, agrees also with cold, and changes into moisture, that is, its contrary? Moisture will not depart from the cold and moist element, although it receives greater assistance from fire, which improves all compounds. It is also a natural work that it makes itself black, white and red: these three visible colours accord with three elements, fire, water and earth, and air knows how to penetrate them. You also say that this work is made from one single thing, in one single vessel, from one substance, for four give only one essence. Within it is one thing that effectively begins and completes the work. It lacks nothing except a little warmth administered by a person, thereby drawing out what is needed through your wisdom and art. Thus everything required for beginning, middle and end exists within this matter in sufficient perfection. It is the same as with a human being, horse, grain or fruit. For the human form is contained within human seed: bones, flesh, blood, hair and so forth. Likewise each seed contains its like and form. A human comes from a human, fruit from fruit, an animal from an animal. This order exists throughout the whole round world and flows from God’s wisdom, which wills it so and has given you power over it.

Now I know that when the seed is enclosed within the female vessel and it is not opened again, no further human effort is needed, neither the addition nor removal of anything small or great. It needs no opening, closing or touching, for everything required for perfection is within it. You say it is the same with the philosophers’ Stone: one needs no more than a single matter reduced to dust, containing air, water, heat and everything required to complete this work. Nor is it necessary to handle it, except to add a little fire to awaken the inner warmth, just as a child lies in its mother’s womb in natural warmth. You further indicate that this matter contains its perfection within itself, but cannot manifest its operation without human art and assistance. By that assistance of art I understand philosophical science and foresight: preparing the matter by handling it, separating what is superfluous, closing this compounded, simple earth—which has become one with its water—securely in the glass or vessel, and setting it in the appropriate furnace with gentle warmth. I consider this the whole craft; whatever anyone may say, a person can do nothing else in it. When you begin to work and have passed into a dust-like being, you dissolve after the preparation has been undergone and make the dry watery. You raise this through sublimation into the air with great understanding, and at last you alone make that which perfects other imperfect things. Therefore you, Nature, are the first begetter when you mingle the four elements into one essence, of which no human being but you can have knowledge. So I have understood it, and I hope, if it pleases God and you, to see it in due time.

For now I leave aside the terms of time and remain with the question of how one may rightly understand and know how to obtain the matter, whence it comes and how good it is, and what great virtue it imparts in perfecting imperfect things. I know that gold is the best among minerals, yet neither in its form nor its matter has it the power to exceed its perfection. Its operation is not so great that it can perfect anything beyond itself, whatever art a person applies to it. Anyone who said that one must open it and bring it into quicksilver would be a fool without understanding, for nothing can be obtained from gold beyond what is within it. What should a person seek within it except at least what is there, when nothing more can be found? It is a futile undertaking. Nevertheless, to reveal their fantasy, fools say that through their art the body must be brought back into first matter. But from your teaching I know that reduction does not take place through things made into a determinate form, species or individual, unless that species is first corrupted. Even after such corruption there is no generation of a like form unless the species first returns to its genus. I say further that destruction is not the way to make gold. Once it has truly been taken out of its form, a person cannot bring it back again. It would already require subtle art to make it into a proper powder. Whoever proposes to dissolve it so as to separate its compound or body into the first mixture you made from the elements will never bring it to that state, whatever they may say. For it endures heat and frost and grows finer the longer it remains in the fire: so perfect is it in its nature. It is a creature close to the elements, possessing no seed or grain through which reduction after putrefaction could return it to its former form, for its matter is too sweet. It is dead, and death is its being or existence; therefore no other metal or quicksilver can grow from it. Consequently one cannot say universally that every thing begets its like. Apart from plants and sentient things, this is ill said concerning minerals. The former receive nourishment and life, seed themselves and propagate; the latter sense nothing and are as large in the first year as in the last. From the elements, through you, they take their being within the earth, without sowing or cultivation.