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SUBTERRANEAN PHYSICS

Introduction or Preface.

S U M M A R Y.

N. 1. Personal observation or experience is found wanting in chemical writers. N. 2. Concerning the two great laboratories of the world. N. 3. Visual contemplation of these is recommended. N. 4. Such contemplation should be established through stages. N. 5. The connection between the laboratory of Nature and of Art In this context, "Art" refers to human technology and chemistry. N. 6. The author's aim in this work. N. 7. Concerning the dignity of the study of subterranean things. N. 8. Concerning the triad of Nature and its three wondrous workshops. N. 9. Concerning the necessity of this study. N. 10. Concerning the obscurity of the same, and the causes of this obscurity. N. 11. Concerning the division of this work.

I N T R O D U C T I O N.

T E X T.

N. 1.

The path to the subterranean world is steep; it is a journey not completed without the danger of ladders and torches, for "it does not fall to every man’s lot to visit Corinth" original: "non enim cuivis contingit adire Corinthum"; a classical proverb meaning that not everyone has the means or talent to achieve difficult things. This very difficulty is the reason why many writers on subterranean matters have written much by merely describing the labors of others, which they sold as their own, while they themselves remained utterly ignorant. As for me, in this subject, one eyewitness pleases me more than ten who have only heard reports. Therefore, lest I commit in this work the very thing I condemn in others, behold: I present myself to you as an eyewitness and a practitioner of all those things mentioned in this book—on this condition, however, that you also become an eyewitness. For I will not involve you in the subtle and "blind" theories (with which the brains of all idle men teem), but I will shell for you certain savory kernels, so that you too may learn how to crack the husks.

N. 2.

Before all else, therefore, you should know that there are two great laboratories in the world: one of Nature, the other of Art; one subterranean, the other above-ground. The latter serves the former as a handmaid; the former conducts itself as the Mistress. Or, to offer a more accurate example: the former is the mother, the latter is the midwife original: "obstetrix". I would not wish, then, if you desire to obtain a successful birth anywhere, for you to leave the pregnant woman, even as she is in the very act of labor, without a midwife; or