Experience and testimony

Use in the book

The first Trumpet of Truth is frequent experience, said to have occurred in Germany and elsewhere, among people of high and low estate. Khunrath declines to name the persons and places on page 26, saying that they are already publicly known or reserved for another occasion. He directs the uninformed to honour- and truth-loving members of the Art. The passage therefore asks the reader to accept a socially mediated body of evidence; it does not place the observations needed for independent verification on the page.

Khunrath immediately distinguishes possession from production. Some who used the wonder-working substance did not prepare it, but, he argues, somebody must have prepared it earlier. The existence-claim may therefore receive support from an effect even when the operator lacks knowledge of the means of making the agent. Pages 155–15723 apply precisely this distinction against public tingents. A demonstration can fail to establish its performer's authority, without Khunrath withdrawing his belief that experience attests the Stone.

The qualification runs further. Page 30 tells those with neither reading nor practice to withhold confident praise or blame, and warns against rashly opposing experience. Yet pages 171–1722 refuse to let accumulated furnace work settle a dispute. Burning coal, damaging material, and repeating manipulations are insufficient without natural grounds, reasonable observation of what the works teach, and philosophical reflection. Experience counts only when interpreted. The book's method consequently combines trust in qualified witnesses, the practical discrimination of an experienced worker, and a demand for causal explanation. It neither abolishes testimony in favour of direct observation nor permits every anecdote or impressive display to function as proof.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 25Repeated contemporary experience is introduced as the first Trumpet against denial of the Stone.
2. 1599 p. 26Persons and places are withheld, while possession of the substance is distinguished from having prepared it.
3. 1599 p. 30Reading and practice qualify a person to speak; experience is not to be opposed rashly.
4. 1599 p. 136Observation includes natural workings in the world and often dangerous laboratory labour.
5. 1599 p. 156Possessing and using a tincture does not establish the ability to prepare it again.
6. 1599 p. 172Reasonable observations and philosophical reflection complete the rebuke to mere claims of extensive labour on page 171.

Translation in this edition

The English Experience preserves the breadth of the source better than replacing every occurrence with experiment. The modern notes sometimes describe a particular argument as empirical; that is useful commentary, but it should not make the unnamed reports of pages 25–262 look like documented experimental protocols. The witnesses remain Khunrath's asserted witnesses.