Decorative horizontal headpiece featuring floral and scrollwork motifs.

FIRST TREATISE.

ON NATURE,

WHAT IT MAY BE,

and what kind of searchers

it should have.

Decorative drop cap "M". MANY WISE and most learned men, many centuries ago, and indeed as Hermes bears witness, before the flood, wrote much concerning the preparation of the Philosopher's Stone the legendary substance capable of transmuting metals and prolonging life. They left us so many writings that, unless Nature worked credible things for us daily, hardly anyone would now believe NATURE to be true. This is because in former centuries there were not so many inventors of things. Our predecessors did not consider anything other than Nature itself and the possibility of Nature. Although they remained only in the simple path of Nature, they nevertheless found those things which we, now occupied in so many matters, could hardly have imagined with our wits.