The greedy man always lacks and has not what he has, but is had
and thirsts in the middle of waters like another Tantalus.

Wherefore it ought not to seem a wonder if the chemical art
does not answer the hunger of the greedy; if their desire and
avidity does not reach the desired end; if their labor brings
forth no fruit; if their fire produces not gold, but smoke;
and if by their blowings they establish themselves as a
mockery of the wind: for that deservedly happens to them,
since they approach this most worthy science with no
praiseworthy end: nor does it befit virtue to serve the vice
of greed. Therefore it is a just retribution of heaven that
those who seek gold with excessive desire, deviating from
the right paths of the Philosophers, and not following the
simplicity of nature, finally find not gold, but desperate
poverty. It is therefore a good granted to the sons of art
to find and to attain the transmutation of metals.
Furthermore, I desire you to be warned concerning one
thing, lest by a light and unskilled credulity you believe
certain triflers, or sellers of sophisticated recipes: for
there are certain idle smoke-sellers and marketplace
deceivers who, with their sophisticated whitenings,
reddenings, and impure amalgamations, mock others,
deceive not a few, and reduce everyone to desperate
misery. For in the beginning of their "Recipe," or rather
"Deceive," what do they not promise? They hold out
immense riches and never-failing treasures, and indeed
they exhibit them within a very short space of time: and with
a pompous display of words, and a haughty ostentation,
boasting that they know all things, they declaim their
own experiences: when nevertheless in this transmutatory
art they know only this, that they know nothing; for in the
end they see that they, gold, and nothingness are
identified. From these therefore beware: but tread the
paths of the Philosophers: and in reading bring a mind
of recognizing and of forgiving; for thus you will repay a
grateful mind for a small gift of a great mind. May the
Triune The Holy Trinity make you happy.

Part One

On the generation of Metals in the bowels

of the Earth, and on their properties, and

how they may be extracted from minerals.

I shall now briefly narrow this controversy.
I say therefore there have not been those lacking who
deny that any power of effecting metals is given in nature,
but that all those things were procreated by God from
the beginning of the world. But why did they not say
that all individuals of whatever species were likewise
created by God in the very origin of the world? Or just
as he created only some things to which he conferred
the power of begetting similar things thereafter: why
do they think this multiplicative power is denied to metals
alone, and to other fossils? It must be said, therefore, that
God in the first construction of things produced animals,
trees, metals, and other things of this sort, into which
he infused the virtue of generating similar things thereafter;
for thus the ornament and perfection of the whole world
required; and this also the dignity of metals demanded,
lest they alone be deprived of the seed of multiplicative virtue.

This observation of experience is present for this truth;
for it happens sometimes in various places of the earth
that metals were found in which many years before not
even traces of metals appeared; very often also immature
and volatile gold is found by the diggers of minerals, which
after many years have passed was found mature, fixed,
and colored. This also convinces us, while it is established
that the metals themselves in their matrices, or minerals,
are continually increased and newly born; which is
discovered among all from Ilua Elba, an island of the
Tyrrhenian Sea which is commonly and in Italian called
Elba, in which certain mines of iron are found, from
which this metal, having once been dug out,