Now follows an account to be made concerning the matter of the hidden nature of the blessed Stone of the Philosophers.

The Second Treatise.

Morienus original: "Morienus"; likely referring to Morienus Romanus, a legendary 7th-century alchemist says: You should know that the entire work of this Art concludes in two stages, and these are linked together so that when one is completed, the other begins and then finishes; thus the entire Mastery is perfected. But these stages do not occur except within their one single matter.

To understand this more precisely, it is first to be known that Nature—as Geber original: "Geber"; the Latinized name of Jabir ibn Hayyan, the most influential figure in early Islamic alchemy speaks in his Summa concerning the creation of metals—works the metals out of mercury and sulfur, and

This is also what Ferrarius original: "Ferrarius"; likely referring to the 13th-century alchemist Efferarius Monachus intends in his inquiry into Alchemy in the twenty-fifth chapter: That Nature, from the beginning of the birth of metals, takes for itself a slimy, weak water mixed with very white, nimble, sulfurous earth. This resolves into a steam or vapor and rises into the veins or crevices of the earth, cooking or thickening the moisture and dryness together firmly until there arises a substance called Mercury original: "Queckhsilber". And this is now the proper and most immediate matter of the metals, as was also mentioned above. Therefore, he speaks again in the twenty-sixth chapter, saying: those who wish to follow Nature should not take mercury alone, but mercury and Sulfur original: "Schwebel" joined together. Not with common mercury and sulfur, but those which Nature has joined together, well-prepared and cooked in sweet fluidity. In such a mercury, Nature has begun with its first action and ended in a metallic nature; and there she has stopped, for she has accomplished her part, thus leaving it to the Art to complete the same into a perfect Stone of the Philosophers original: "Stein der Philosophi". End.