Digestion

Use in the book

Page 71 imagines prepared metallic substances remaining in digestion for many years. They might already be quicksilver-like, joined with foreign waters or liquid in themselves. None of these conditions makes them the required first matter, because the necessary reduction through universal first matter has not occurred. The long duration is deliberately concessive: even a patient laborant cannot obtain the missing ground merely by extending the time.

Page 114 places digestion inside the opponents’ proposed self-contained metallic process. Their separated sulphurs are to be sown into their own mercuries and salts, then putrefied and dissolved in digestion before coagulation and fixation. The following pages reject the alleged field and the status of its constituent parts. The passage is reported argument, not Khunrath’s instruction to carry it out.

Together, the occurrences distinguish time, appearance and causal adequacy. A process may run for a long time and use impressive operation-names while still failing to supply the mother required for regeneration. This also clarifies why the sudden metallic exaltation claimed for the completed universal Stone is not inconsistent with the criticism of long fruitless work: time alone is not the source of power in either case.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 71Even years of digestion cannot make ordinary metallic preparations the required pri-material ground.
2. 1599 p. 114Digestion is part of the opponents’ proposal to putrefy separated metallic constituents in their own parts.
3. 1599 p. 117The reply denies that the separated parts have become pri-material principles.
4. 1599 p. 101The completed universal Stone’s sudden action depends on its prepared state, not on duration alone.

Translation in this edition

“Digestion” is retained as a historical process-word without specifying a modern heating, biological or chemical mechanism. The many years on page 71 are a hypothetical concession in a denial, not a recommended duration.