TO THE READER

I offer to your curiosity, honorable Reader, the manuscript promised in my Treatise on the Universal Tincture original: "de Tincturâ Universali" by P. J. Fabre, a Physician still living after his death a play on words, as Fabre’s work remains influential despite his passing.

If you are knowledgeable in physical-chemical matters, you will easily perceive that this small work needs no praise from others, nor, like salable wine, any ivy a classical reference to the tradition of hanging ivy outside taverns to indicate the sale of good wine, since it proposes the desired information with such accurate clarity that, saving the judgment of the more learned, it has few equals and fewer superiors.

I offer it to you indeed, since the great works of God must be spread abroad, and physical matters must be examined more and more by the worthy and the learned; yet I would like to candidly warn you first that, before you enter this doubtful arena, you should cautiously consider within yourself whether your shoulders are sufficient to bear this heavy burden, whether you find within yourself a legitimate calling for this very serious work, and whether with a truly pious purpose you will propagate the honor of God and the benefit of your Neighbor, if you should be judged worthy from heaven to be granted the ability to proclaim that eureka I have found it.

Since it is known to the genuine Sons of the Art the alchemists, that God, who knows all, is accustomed to entrust this royal gift only to a very few. For unless your labor and effort rely on this goal, it will certainly be the same as if you were to thrust a sword into your own hand while raging; and thereafter you will experience that your oil and labor are lost a classical idiom for wasted effort, that you have washed the stone the Philosophers' Stone, that you have squandered your goods for the Stone, and that you have purchased regret at a very high price, contrary to the warning of the Philosopher entering the brothel. Farewell and show favor.

Altenburg, on the Kalends of July, 1690.