Dissolution and Reduction

Use in the book

Page 46 assigns dissolution to the fore-work upon the natural subject. The extended laboratory catalogue on pages 67–70234 then describes many ways in which workers produce powders, liquors, spiritual waters and running corporeal mercuries from metals. Khunrath grants the reality and possible utility of such preparations. Their outward states do not establish that the metals have returned to their first matter.

The positive rule is set down across pages 73–742: reduction of metals into first matter must occur through first matter. A thing is naturally dissolved by that from which it has its composition. The repeated formula prevents the endpoint from being inferred merely from an appearance of fluidity. Even long digestion, clear water or impressive colours cannot supply the required ground.

The second technical objection tests this principle with separated sulphur, mercury and salt. Khunrath doubts that the alleged clear metallic mercury remains by itself once the foreign waters used in its preparation are removed. More fundamentally, even if all three separated products are granted, they are constituents of an already generated metal. On page 117 they are things principiated, not pri-material principles. Separation into parts has not reversed their history of specification.

The two roads qualify how the reduction requirement applies. On the first, metal is reduced through the watery first matter before common preparation. On the second, the already completed universal Stone exalts metal by fermentation without that preceding reduction. The latter is no independent exception to the necessity of the catholic ground: that ground has already undergone its own higher preparation.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 46Dissolution is the initial operation of the fore-work.
2. 1599 p. 70Prepared metallic liquids are denied immediate status as first matter.
3. 1599 p. 74The formula requires reduction through the first matter.
4. 1599 p. 116Removal of the employed waters is proposed as a test of the supposed self-standing metallic mercury.
5. 1599 p. 117Separated essential parts are distinguished from pri-material principles.
6. 1599 p. 101The completed universal Stone is said to act without the preceding reduction required by the first road.

Translation in this edition

“Dissolve,” “resolve,” “solve” and “reduce” should not be harmonized into a single modern operation. Page 160 itself lists both dissolving and solving without explaining a technical difference between them. This lexicon preserves the distinction the argument does establish: a dissolved form alone is not a demonstrated pri-material return.