Friedrichstadt Leisure or the Chemical Tantalus

plant whatsoever that, if a thousand Doctors were gathered together to pass judgment on the virtue of a plant, a person of lower station might be able to enumerate more virtues than all those adorned with doctoral purple. Every plant, even if it is the hyssop springing from the wall, is of infinite virtue. God, the Creator of infinite power, has also adorned every Creature with a treasury of infinite virtues. We experience at this time that even fungi, which are the excrement of the earth and cannot even be referred to as plants, have been studied by a great Italian—if I am not mistaken, born of a most generous lineage—who was primarily occupied with searching out the history and nature of fungi. He achieved much in investigating their nature, of which labor and scrutiny the Leipzig Acts and the Novels of Learned Men have mentioned with no small praise and commendation. (May God continue to excite such intellects to their number; may there never be a lack of learned men who devote their work to this labor, and not to the great detriment of the Republic, so that the New Literary Journals of the Baltic Sea and our Germany might cease.) Fungi were heretofore considered as nothing, as useless, excremental filth of the earth; but that great Italian Knight showed that these fungi possess their own utility and admirable nature. Indeed, it can also be said of them: this also is a character of divine omnipotence, whose signature also expresses something singular, and the Archeus The vital force or inner principle of nature in Paracelsian thought. of Nature shows its wondrous play in them.

The industry of certain great physicians is to be greatly praised, who have applied great study to adorning herbals and have shown that this Kingdom also contains things that are altogether admirable even to the sight. It would contribute much to the digging out of the Secrets of such a Kingdom if more would follow the footsteps of the Tilingii, Paulini, Francii, and others, and choose some singular plant to scrutinize in an examination or in some anatomy; then, with the success of time, a more perfect botanical science would be cultivated. I propose a single problem to the entire Theater of Physicians. It is known that God, just as He created all things in weight, number, and measure, so also He established certain ranks in all families of creatures, so that it is possible to know from two families of sublunary bodies which is the most excellent body in that family; and thus it is known that in the family of Minerals, Gold is the most excellent; in the family of Animals, man, as God's Viceroy, is the most excellent. Now let the physicians, however many there are, say: what is the most excellent body in the Vegetable Kingdom? Perhaps they will use here...