Chymist and artist

Meaning

The main treatise addresses the chymist, philosopher, artist or practitioner as someone whose skill must be governed by piety. 'Artist' means an adept worker in an art, not primarily a maker of pictures. Part I: entrance and preparation · unit 2 denies that desire or human power can command the gift; Part I: entrance and preparation · unit 8 compares the worker to one who sows, plants and waters while God gives increase. Manual work is still required. The conclusion's first-person claim of daily observation then links the work's progress with the practitioner's conduct before God. The English 'practitioner' usefully avoids a modern fine-arts association, but the asserted moral correlation remains the anonymous author's testimony, not an independently established measure of experimental competence.