Three Books on Gold

or from distilled undiluted wine, or from some secret earth, or if you prefer from a most noble kind of calcination, attenuated through many transfers, they have collected potable gold, they will admit that a more subtle power is drawn from it; they will not agree that a fifth essence is drawn [out], which, if they wish to collect it from elementary effects, which they will proclaim are not found in it, a response will be at hand, so that they may contend that they are mistaking an appearance for the thing itself, and they will attribute the effects, which other things could also provide, to the diverse, merged, and refracted concurrences of causes. Then, if they concede this freely to the Peripatetics, how have they not denounced another of their dogmas, that is, that living things do not live from metals? But so that they may leave the finished dispute to the physicians who are wrangling among themselves, they will thus assert that whatever reasons they have weighed to this day for making potable gold, those [reasons] do not actually reach the point of drinking gold itself. For it is clear that it is usual for them to reduce gold to ash, or to call it calx, which is done in many ways, so much so that to reduce it to its original form, if by chance one should wish, you could either in no way do so, or with difficulty, if indeed the moisture has departed; if you have removed that thoroughly, you have destroyed the gold. It is the decree of Aristotle and Theophrastus that there is such a liquor in all metals that their nature is established by it, and it is clearly distinguished from the nature of stones. Therefore, they will add, gold is not drunk, but a portion of that thing which was gold, dissolved by an extraneous liquor, to which the power