Spagyric Anatomy of Mercury

and by bringing into the middle such portents of falsities and enormous absurdities, they basely betray their own remarkable stupidity, often joined with extreme ἀπαιδευσίᾳ lack of education/ignorance and malice, and expose themselves to the laughter of others. However, among other metals or minerals produced by nature as generator for the use of this life and generously given to us, it is certain that quicksilver or MERCURY holds not the last place of dignity. Rather, it must be preferred to many others, both by the nobility and excellence of the substance it has received, and by the multiplicity of utility which it provides. This does not need to be painstakingly proved now, since it has long been sufficiently agreed upon among all, not only the wise masters of the Chemical art, but also the excellent craftsmen of metallic things, and it is so much a matter of confession among them that one who would rashly want to deny this would also seem to deserve to want to deny the blackness of the Ethiopian or the whiteness of Snow. For from MERCURY, as if from the proximate material cause, while another principle also concurs, namely