Friedrichstadt Leisure or the Chemical Tantalus

for violence, by corroding all things and dividing them into atoms, is no different than if two most cruel animals were to rage against each other for so long, and not rest until they had torn each other apart, devoured each other, and these two had been converted into one substance. This violent cruelty between these two ingredients of the L. P. Lapis Philosophorum / Philosopher's Stone composition is, however, nothing but a certain friendly amity, a desired concord, a communication of their own proper intrinsic qualities to one another, and a certain magnetic attraction toward each other. Dried and thirsty vegetables do not imbibe the May dew with greater appetite than the philosophical water exercises this leonine cruelty upon the earth, and the earth upon the water. To the philosophical earth, however, this slaughter is far more pleasant than nectar, and by tearing apart its marrow, the earth receives distinguished strength, since it possesses an entirely and absolutely hermaphroditic nature with the water.

§. 10. This holy work warns the student of Chrysopæa the art of gold-making to choose a matter for composing the L. P. that prides itself on this inscription: I am the treasure chest of the miracles and benefits of God. Indeed, this matter renders all philosophers and all physicians who look upon it astonished, and although they see it, it is not granted to them to know what it hides in its marrow. Physicians use both subjects for medicine, and indeed prepare from them medicines worthy of great praise, with which they not rarely restore health to the sick; but since they do not understand the true anatomy of these bodies—by which they communicate their own properties to each other, and by which out of two one is made, and both are converted into a most fluid and most penetrating salt—they are content with the bark and attain only the surface. It is with them as it is written in Aesop's fable, that once a Stork invited a Fox to dinner, offering him a vessel with a long and very high neck, inviting the fox to eat; but when the fox could not reach into the vessel and its neck with his mouth, the stork inserted his beak and devoured it alone. And thus these two subjects are handed into the hands of physicians, but, since they are destitute of experience, they obtain nothing—being unable to discern how the analysis is to be instituted—and because it is a religious taboo for them to think contrary to the received method reduced into the form of an art, they live content with an empty nut. Secondly, these two pride themselves on this inscription: do not touch me unless the hand is expert, for if they are touched and these two are joined, they receive those who touch them with a burning fire original: "farcalmo", and if they feel the force of Vulcan fire, they flee, leaving behind no hope of any profit. Thirdly, the matter wishes