First Treatise

And although those ancients remained only in the simple way of nature, they nevertheless discovered things that we, though now occupied with so many matters, could scarcely have imagined with our own wits. This happens because the nature and generation of things in the world now seem cheap and simple to us. Therefore, we direct our intellects not toward known things, but toward such things that cannot, or can only with great difficulty, be done. For this reason, it happens to us that it is easier to devise subtle things—and we can imagine things that the Philosophers themselves did not know—than it is to reach the true course of nature and the meaning of the Philosophers.

And so the nature of man is such that he neglects those things he knows and always seeks others; much more so the human intellects to which nature is subjected. For example, you see any ArtisanLatin: Artifex; referring here to a skilled craftsman or an alchemist practicing his craft. who, when he has already reached the highest perfection of his art, seeks other things, or misuses his skill, or simply stops. In the same way, noble nature always acts, even into the very IliadumA term used by Paracelsus to describe the ultimate limit or the first matter of the universe; the "greatest term.", that is, the ultimate boundary; afterward, it ceases.

For a certain promise was implanted in nature from the beginning, so that through a complete course it might come to better things and have full rest, toward which it strives with every effort, and rejoices in its end. It is not unlike the Ant of old ageA reference to a folk belief or proverb where an ant grows wings before death; here symbolizing a final, transformative stage of life., for whom nature creates wings in its old age. So, truly, our intellects have progressed so far, especially in the Philosophical ArtAlchemy., or the practice of the StoneThe Philosopher's Stone., that they have now almost reached the Iliadum itself