perties. The custom is passing away, top, of arranging seven metals for the seven planets. From this it arose that, not having full knowledge of metals, people reckoned quicksilver as one of them. According to their comparison of things, gold is Sol, silver is Luna, copper is Venus, lead Saturn, and tin Jupiter. But come, arrange these things. If you join Venus and copper you will soon see how they square and agree with one another. Join and compare lead with Saturn, and notice what happens. Compare tin and Jupiter, and see what fruit will arise. Such philosophy is nothing but rubbish and confusion. Not the slightest vestige of any foundation or light appears in it. Such remarks are merely barbarous, and not philosophy at all. Of the same kind is the assertion that quicksilver is Mercury. Compare the complexion, nature, working, quality, properties, and various virtues and essences, and see how they square one with another and agree. They are quite incongruous. One has not the least likeness to the other. It is true that the Philosophy of Plants has arranged seven herbs according to the seven planets; but these are the mere dreams of physicians, with no stability or power of proof in them. According to them, mercurialis is Mercury, heliotrope Sol, and lunaria Luna. But do you think—you "Fathers"—that you can fly away to the sky and have the power of comparing earth with heaven without any astronomy or philosophy, when you cannot even get a glimpse of what lies hid in so common a growth as the heliotrope? This distribution, therefore, should be admitted by nobody, but ought to be relegated to those who do not judge according to the light of Nature, but by their own long stoles. The chapter on metals teaches you that those metals are six in number, so far as they are known to me, and I have given them above. To these are added a few others—some three or four—which are known to me, and the number and species whereof shall be given in due course. I think it very likely that a large number still remain. For by provings of the metals, many proofs present themselves which are metallic, that is, they are reckoned according to the nature of the six metals, though they do not altogether agree thereto; so that I should augur from this that a great number of metals still remain. Every mineral can be thoroughly known and discriminated if subjected to a sufficient examination.
With regard to the generation of Gold, the true opinion is that it is Sulphur sublimated to the highest degree by Nature, and purged from all dregs, blackness, and filth whatever, so transparent and lustrous (if one may say so) as no other of the metals can be, with a higher and more exalted body. Sulphur, one of the three primals, is the first matter of gold. If Alchemists could find and obtain this Sulphur, such as it is in the auriferous tree at its roots in the mountains, it would certainly be the cause of effusive joy on their part. This is the Sulphur of the Philosophers, from which gold is produced, not that other Sulphur from which come iron, copper, etc. This is a little bit of their universality. Moreover, Mercury, separated to the highest degree, according to metallic nature, and free from all earthly and accidental
