The Great Elucidator: Or Enlightenment on the Reformation of the Whole Wide World

and flowery, veiled words that among a hundred thousand, hardly one is found who could grasp something useful and salutary from it. Hence, such great inaccuracy and perversion have arisen that some, at great expense and with long-lasting effort until the end of their lives, have worked on it in vain. Others, however, seeing that so few people are found who truly possessed the lapidem Philosophorum philosopher's stone, turn to mocking, reviling, and despising it, as if it were pure fantasy and deception. And it has now even come to pass among the ignorant, unfortunately, that Ars chymica the alchemical art is a res odiosa hateful thing to them, and such people who engage in this studium field of study are spoken of quite shamefully. Indeed, some even dare to call it a devil's work.