CHAPTER V.

Our stone is therefore one, namely, the permanent water, clean, lucent, clear, having a celestial color: but unless that which improves it is made in that water, what you seek will not come to be. We honor the Sun, truly, because our water is improved by it: for without the Sun and its shadow, no coloring poison is generated; indeed, he who believes he can create a tincture without these proceeds in the practice like an ass to a crown. And that is because a body does not act upon a body, nor a spirit upon a spirit, in that the form does not receive an impression from the form, nor matter from matter: for the similar does not act upon its similar, nor suffer from it, since neither of them is more worthy than the other. Therefore, none of them acts upon another, because an equal has no dominion over an equal. Nevertheless, a body receives an impression from a spirit, just as matter does from form, because they are naturally apt to act and suffer in turn. For the body tinctures, the spirit penetrates: yet the body does not tincture unless it is tinctured, because the thickness of the earth does not enter on account of its gros-