Cement

Meaning

Cement appears in the Summary's catalogue of supposedly futile aids for returning common metallic gold and silver to Mercury. The governing analogy is fruit already plucked from a tree: manipulating it cannot put it back into the original nourishing relation. The word therefore belongs to a rejected practice in Philosophical Summary · unit 6, not to an endorsed building material or an approved ingredient. The aligned English retains 'cement' rather than specifying a modern composition. Its importance lies in the Summary's broad refusal: however numerous the waters, cements or other aids employed, the speaker says that the separation from the natural source cannot simply be reversed.