Milk, honey, sugar, and herbs

Meaning

Milk, honey, sugar and herbs appear in the Via's retrospective indictment of unsuccessful material searches. Way of Truth · unit 18 asks what these substances, together with many operations and other materials, have achieved toward metallic transmutation, and answers that they have done nothing useful. Way of Truth · unit 4 already includes the speaker's own fruitless labour among herbs. These names are therefore evidence of rejected experimentation, not a recommended preparation. The English preserves their ordinary recognisability, but neither passage identifies exact plants or formulations. The local criticism concerns failure to reach the Via's true art, not a universal claim that these things have no use in ordinary life.