Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

therefore I would waste time uselessly, I undertook to elaborate this Treatise. I had the intention of composing a Commentary on Medical Machiavellism, for which many opportunities are given daily to be written: but I was forced to change the decree. Meanwhile, however, what is postponed is not taken away. But it has pleased me to share these few pages about the L. B. P. Lapis Benedictus Philosophorum, the Blessed Stone of the Philosophers with the learned world once again. The argument is indeed of arduous effort, partly because I have been removed from the Library, and partly because it pertains to that kind of labor, or to the sect of Philosophers of that sort, which is contradicted on all sides, and it is almost as if it were a generally accepted practice among many to smear such work with calumnies: but since it is, nevertheless, a work by which I am neither injurious to the divine Majesty, nor do I offend the Magistrate, nor do I harm my neighbor, it has pleased me to test the powers of my wit regarding this argument. These are now the things which I wished and was able to bring forward in the place of a preface, and I ask you, kind reader, to deign to receive this work of mine, such as it is, with a kindly face. Whether I shall write more on this argument is doubtful, except that I would gladly have my Hundred Chemical Paradoxes come out in public, and if God grants life and health, I shall make the effort. Farewell, favor me, kind reader, and I ask you to remember me for good. Again and again, farewell and favor, yours, Nestor II. Friedrichstadt, 1717, May 15th, ♄ Saturday, at the third hour of the afternoon.

Epistle to the Chemiatrists of our Europe.

The theater, most excellent sir, which this century, of which we are now living in the seventeenth year, is adorned with such great and such illustrious men, excellent in every kind of science, art, and language, is such that no century elapsed since the birth of our Savior could have shown a similar theater equally splendid and flourishing in every kind of polymathy, the splendor of which theater would not have so dazzled the eyes of men, had not the help of God informed the minds of so many men and opened to us what the learned world was doing, and so that it might not also remain hidden what was being done in the most diffuse literary world. To that end, the Leipzig Acts of the Learned are published by the Learned in our Germany, and News of the Learned are issued weekly, and there is no nation in all of Europe in which curious men are not found, who plant an arboretum and a green garden as if for posterity, so that the most recent age of the world after our time might also be able to seek information concerning the labors of their ancestors.