Introduction to the Divine Art of Chemistry

at a point, but evil and the oblique deviate and recede from the point in infinite ways. And this is one of the most powerful reasons why the art of Alchemy is called false and sophistical by the ignorant. For they set themselves to judge that of which they have no power to judge, since they are deprived of that mode of being, mode of understanding and knowing, and mode of signifying concerning this invariable unity of it. For everyone judges well of those things which he knows, and is a good judge of them, as is said in the first book of the Ethics. Therefore, by contrast, no one judges well of those things which he does not know, nor is he a good judge of them at all, especially since the judgment of things to be operated is caused in the works, whence the philosopher says in the fifth book of the Politics: One of the things that is impossible or difficult is that those who have not shared in the works should become expert judges. And it is to be known that
a this art, almost alone among all in the world, in its doctrine uses
s proper, strange, and unusual names, and allegories,
n and riddles, and metaphors, and equivocations, and trans-
n sumptions, and coverings, and personifications, and hyperboles, and
i in them, as much practically as speculatively, since it draws all arts
and sciences to itself and mixes itself with them. For this reason it is necessarily very difficult and occult, not to mention arduous and shadowy, as will be evident in the treatise of its investigation, and its principle, whence also its cause. It is to be noted on this passage that by reason of that which first occurs to the intellect, the practical intellect precedes the speculative. But by reason of the order and doctrine to be treated, so that we may arrive through investigation into true knowledge and the correct operation of it, the speculative precedes the practical. And this is by reason in all things that are to be operated. For those things which are prior in intention and mind are posterior in speculative doctrine and the mode of operating. We arrive at the work ultimately, and not otherwise. It is to be known, however, that the speculative intellect and the practical, according to the aforementioned mode, are called so in a broad sense and even improperly. A speculative intellect is properly called that which is occupied