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(25) Only two elements, water and earth, are visible, and earth is called the hiding-place of fire, water the abode of air.
(26) In these two elements we have the broad law of limitation which divides the male from the female.
(27) The first matter of vegetables is the water and earth hidden in its seed, these being more water than earth.
(28) The first matter of animals is the mixture of the male and female sperm, which embodies more moisture than dryness.
(29) The first matter of minerals is a kind of viscous water, mingled with pure and impure earth.
(30) Impure earth is combustible sulphur, which hinders all fusion, and superficially matures the water joined to it, as we see in the minor minerals, marcasite, magnesia, antimony, etc.
(31) Pure earth is that which so unites the smallest parts of its aforesaid water that they cannot be separated by the fiercest fire, so that either both remain fixed or are volatilized.
(32) Of this viscous water and fusible earth, or sulphur, is composed that which is called quicksilver, the first matter of the metals.
(33) Metals are nothing but Mercury digested by different degrees of heat.
(34) Different modifications of heat cause, in the metallic compound, either maturity or immaturity.
(35) The mature is that which has exactly attained all the activities and properties of fire. Such is gold.
(36) The immature is that which is dominated by the element of water, and is never acted on by fire. Such are lead, tin, copper, iron, and silver.
(37) Only one metal, viz., gold, is absolutely perfect and mature. Hence it is called the perfect male body.
(38) The rest are immature and, therefore, imperfect.
(39) The limit of immaturity is the beginning of maturity; for the end of the first is the beginning of the last.
(40) Silver is less bounded bu aqueous immaturity than the rest of the metals, though it may indeed be regarded as to a certain extent impure, still its water is already covered with the congealing vesture of its earth, and it thus tends to perfection.
(41) This condition is the reason why silver is everywhere called by the Sages the perfect female body.
(42) All other metals differ only in the degree of their imperfection, according as they are more or less bounded by the said immaturity; nevertheless, all have a certain tendency towards perfection, though they lack the aforesaid congealing vesture of their earth.
(43) This congealing force is the effect of earthy coldness, balancing its own proper humidity, and causing fixation in the fluid matter.
(44) The lesser metals are fusible in a fierce fire, and therefore lack this perfect congealing force. If they become solid when cool, this is due to the arrangement of their aforesaid earthy particles.
(45) According to the different ways in which this viscous water and pure earth are joined together, so as to produce quicksilver by coagulation, with the mediation of natural heat, we have different metals, some of which are called perfect, like gold and silver, while the rest are regarded as imperfect.
(46) Whoever would imitate Nature in any particular operation must first be sure that he has the same matter, and, secondly, that this substance is acted on in a way similar to that of Nature. For Nature rejoices in natural method, and like purifies like.
(47) Hence they are mistaken who strive to elicit the medicine for the tinging of metals from animals or vegetables. The tincture and the metal tinged must belong to the same root or genus; and as it is the imperfect metals upon which the Philosopher's Stone is to be projected, it follows that the powder of the Stone must be essentially Mercury. The Stone is the metallic matter which changes the forms of imperfect metals into gold, as we may learn from the first chapter of "The Code of Truth": "The Philosophical Stone is the metallic matter converting the substances and forms of imperfect metals"; and all Sages agree that it can have this effect only by being like them.
(48) That Mercury is the first matter of metals, I will attempt to prove by the saying of some Sages.
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