Introduction to the Divine Art of Chemistry

THE BEGINNING OF THE TREATISE OF MASTER PETRUS BONUS LOMBARDUS, physician, INTRODUCTORY TO THE ART OF ALCHEMY, COMPOSITED IN THE YEAR 1330 FROM THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN THE CITY OF POLA, IN THE PROVINCE OF ISTRIA.

Chapter one, in which he introduces generally the speculative part of its truth.

A square woodcut decorative initial 'O' contains a pattern of intertwining vines and foliage.

Every art and every science is either about things, or about the accidents and properties of things, or about both. They are and are made concerning their abstract utilities, and they are things that are properly finite. Accidents, however, which are ingeniously considered in things, are infinite in the number of bodies. Some of these are knowable by the senses, others by the intellect; similarly, in beings of reason, this same thing seems to be. To those entering upon them, almost everything seems easy, and light, superficial, and few doubts occur. But when they are matured in them, and begin to understand the roots and hidden depths beforehand, strong, obscure, and numerous doubts emerge, which have no end. And this is the reason why the end of arts and sciences is infinite, but not of those that are for an infinite end, as is said in the first book of the Politics Aristotle's Politics, Book I. And every inferior science and art receives its subject from its superior, and is contained under it, and contracts to itself by taking from it as much as is sufficient for itself. Therefore, many arts and sciences can be contained under one and be subalternated to one another, because of the diverse considerations of diverse accidents in the same subject. And thus every inferior science, because it receives its principles handed down from its superior, is elevated to it, and that to another superior to itself, until the principles of all sciences are elevated according to order to the first philosophy, which is called Metaphysics, and there is the standing, and there the rise and beginning. And all arts, indeed, contract their beginning and origin from the sciences, and flow from them with mind or without mind. For the principle of the sciences is the intellect, namely either speculative or practical, and all seem to be subalternated to them, either in a certain respect or simply.