THE MONK FERARIUS.
About the beginning of the fourteenth century, this Italian artist gave to the world two treatises—De Lapide Philosophorum and Thesaurus Philosophiæ, which are printed in the Theatrum Chimicum.
The “admirable spectacle” of the palingenesis of plants is described by this Jesuit. “Immediately consequent on exposing to the rays of the sun the phial, filled with quintessence of the rose, there is discovered within the narrow compass of the vase a perfect world of miracles. The plant which lay buried in its ashes awakes, uprises, and unfolds. In the space of half-an-hour the vegetable phœnix is resuscitated from its own dust. The rose issues from its sepulchre and assumes a new life. It is the floral symbol of that resurrection by which mortals lying in darkness and in the shadow of death will pass into beautiful immortality.”
The treatise on the philosophical stone very pertinently remarks that in alchemy the first thing to be ascertained is what is really signified by the myrionimous argentum vivum sapientum, a point on which the author gracefully declines information. Both works are exceedingly obscure and vexatious. The Thesaurus Philosophiæ testifies that the plain speaking of the philosophers is completely illusory, and that it is only in their incomprehensible profundities that we must seek the light of Hermes.
Alchemy is the science of the four elements, which are to be found in all created substances, but are not of the vulgar kind. The whole practice of the art is simply the conversion of these elements into one another. The seed and matter of every metal is mercury, as it is decocted and otherwise prepared in the bowels of the earth, and each of them can be reduced into this prima materia, by the help of which they are also, one and all, susceptible of augmentation and multiplication, even to infinity.