Secrets of the Chemical Pallas Revealed

On the generation of metals in the bowels of the earth, and on their properties, and how they are extracted from mines.

Chapter I

I will now briefly narrow this controversy, because in the first edition I treated it quite extensively. There, I also explained the causes of metals: the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. Therefore, it may now suffice to run through this subject.

I know, then, that there have been those who denied that any power for producing metals exists in nature. They claimed that all metals were procreated by God from the beginning of the world. But why did they not also say that all individuals of every species were likewise created by God in the very origin of the world? Or, since He created only some and granted them the power of generating similar things thereafter, why did they think this multiplicative power was denied to metals alone and to other fossils? It must be said, therefore, that in the first construction of things, God produced animals, trees, metals, and other such things, into which He infused the power of generating similar things in the future. For the adornment and perfection of the whole world required this, and the dignity of metals also demanded it, so that they alone would not be deprived of the multiplicative power of the semine seed.

Nor is the testimony of experience lacking for this truth. For it has sometimes happened that metals were found in various places in the earth where many years before not even a trace