Marengus — Chemical Pallas, ca. 1675 Multilingual MS

of metals appeared. Very often, gold that is immature and volatile is found by mine workers. After many years have passed, this same gold is found to be mature, fixed, and colored. This also proves the point: it is established that metals continually increase in their matrices or mines, and they are born anew. This is known to all from the island of Ilva in the Tyrrhenian Sea, which is commonly called Elba in Italian. In a certain iron mine there, once this metal has been dug out, iron is born again after about twenty-five years and is extracted by the miners once more. Consistent with this is what is certain regarding lead: namely, that when placed in a damp place and left there for a long time, it increases in size.

Certainly, it cannot be denied that metals circulate among themselves and increase and are reborn in the womb of the earth. For in mines, one can sometimes see a flowing vein from a single origin. In one part, it is pure gold, while in another, it is silver mixed with various metals. This is a clear sign that nature proceeds through various steps toward different and continuous digestions. Through the greater refinement and purification of the components of metals, those which were first generated as imperfect are thereafter made into the best gold.

Nor does it stand in the way that it is said by Philosophers that species are not transmutable into one another. This is either because metals, in the opinion of many, do not differ in species, or because they do not differ in an adequate and absolute species,

but only in a subordinate species and as incomplete beings with respect to the end of nature, namely with respect to gold. For the species of an imperfect metal is ordered toward gold itself. Nature indeed always intends the best, which among metals is gold. But ordinarily, in the execution of its work, it does not produce gold first. It begins from the more imperfect things as being easier. It does not start the generation of metals to rest in them (unless it is hindered), but to arrive through imperfect steps at the final completion of gold. It ascends to the most perfect species of gold through the imperfect, incomplete, and subordinate species of imperfect metals. It is just as the formation of a human is ordered from a vegetative species, then passes to the species of sensitive beings, and finally leads to the perfection of rational beings. Then it rests and does not proceed to a further species. Finally, that well-known saying in the schools of Philosophers: "The individual of one species does not pass to another species," must be understood with this limitation: unless the individuals to be transmuted are first corrupted and lose their old forms. Otherwise, stated absolutely, it is false. For we experience daily that individuals of food are transmuted into the species of living creatures and into individuals. Metals, however, can be corrupted, and consequently be transmuted from one metal into another.