The Wayfarer

benefit of others and regarding no small utility, since Ars longa Art is long, vita brevis life is short, judgment is difficult, and Experiment is dangerous, is truly said, as much by reason of Chymistry as of Medicine, I have not ceased to publish; from which, since this TREATISE on the Mountains of the seven Planets, that is, on the ores and substances of terrestrial or metallic things obtained from the mountains, was not less useful than desired by very many, I have not hesitated to dedicate and offer it to Your Highness, for the sake of gratitude, not forgetting the great beneficence once bestowed upon me by you; not as if I were instructing Your Highness, who is of yourself most perceptive, with these things, but so that I might provide and leave behind for others who are less exercised, under your patronage, a certain Chymical Ariadne, by the guidance of whose thread they might escape safely from incredible errors; which kind of writing, since it is both new and very true, unless my hands, eyes, and Vulcan the god of fire/the forge, often representing the alchemical furnace deceive me together with experimental reason and rational experiment, it is not doubtful that it will be most pleasing and acceptable to Your Highness, to whom my previous works, though they proceeded from a sincere mind, have been pleasing, and whom I commend to God the All-Good, All-Great, together with your most beloved spouse and princely children. Given at Frankfurt-am-Main, 1618. In the month of September.