Philadelphia, or brotherly love to the studious in the hermetick art

What, reader, if I show you my opinion on this? I do so not as one who is already knowledgeable, but as one desirous to learn, and submitting to correction if my understanding is wrong. The elixir elixir: here referring to the Philosophers' Stone or the "Great Work" of alchemy is produced naturally and by natural principles; therefore, the difficulty seems to lie in attaining the principles (rather than the practice), which are difficult original: "artificial"; in this context, it refers to something that is not easily found in nature and requires the "art" of the alchemist to uncover or prepare to find. But the alkahest alkahest: the hypothetical universal solvent sought by alchemists, capable of dissolving every other substance is produced artificially or mechanically from natural...